Catholic Conversations with a Toddler

I was at my friend's house yesterday and had a pretty awesome interaction with her daughter, who is about two years old.  She was sitting on my lap, and she started fiddling with the cross I was wearing.  Confused that it was just a cross, not a crucifix with an image of the Lord on it, she asked:

Two:  Where Jesus?
Me:  Hmm?
Two:  Where Jesus?  (holds up the empty cross, confused)
Me:  Oh, this is the cross after He was raised up.
Two:  He raise up?
Me:  Yep, He's raised up.
Two:  I eat it.  (puts cross in her mouth)
Me:  (pulling the cross out of her mouth)  No, no, you don't eat the cross.  You eat Jesus.
Two:  I eat Jesus?
Me:  Yes, but later.
Two:  I eat cookie?
Me:  Yes, let's go eat a cookie.

This has been Catholic conversations with a two-year-old:  the part of the show were a two-year-old has a very Catholic conversation.

Silent Night, PART 3

Silent Night, Part 1

Silent Night, Part 2

"I FEEL SAD…." said the Slowicus Slothicus.  "CHEER ME UP, SANTA."

Santa tried to stretch his face into a smile, but his muscles were all working at different speeds now because the Sloth was so sad, so he sort of ended up in a weird, lopsided grimace.

"AM I LOVED?" asked the Sloth.  The anguish in his voice made Santa's heart skip a beat—or maybe it was just beating really really slowly now.

It seemed like an age and a half later (but only a few heartbeats) that there finally came another noise—a ripping noise.  Santa could see out of the corner of his eye a jagged tear in the sky.  And through the tear emerged just the man he was waiting for—BEOWULF!

Beowulf had ripped a hole in the time-stop barrier WITH HIS BARE HANDS.  (He then carefully closed the hole behind him with surprising gentleness.)  The Sloth's sad mood hadn't affected him yet, so he was still quick on his feet.  Running toward Santa and the Time Sloth, he leapt from roof to roof.  What a sight to see—the man with arms as strong as iron and courage enough to face monsters unarmed.  

When he finally arrived at their street, Beowulf gave the Slowicus Slothicus a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears (WITH HIS BARE HANDS) and smiled reassuringly.  "I hear you had a bad dream?" he asked knowingly.  "Well, don't worry!  I'm here to cheer you up—WITH MY BARE HANDS!"  Then, without any effort at all, Beowulf reached into Santa's bag and pulled out a few basketballs.  He started juggling them (with his bare hands).  "Look how much Santa loves you!  He asked me to rip a hole in the time-stop barrier just to come cheer you up!"  

Santa's heart started beating again.  He would have heaved a sigh of relief, but his lungs still weren't responding at the normal rate yet, and he was beginning to feel light-headed.

After juggling for a bit, Beowulf put the basketballs back into the bag and pulled out a unicycle.  Beowulf wasn't very good at unicycling, but at least it could make the Sloth laugh.  Santa was finally able to breathe, and to move his arms and legs again.  Not very quickly, but enough.  He slowly walked into the bag and began to search for the boxed set of Herodotus.  It was surely around here somewhere….

Beowulf had stopped unicycling at this point and was playing hand games with the Sloth.  "ABC, it's as easy as a 123!"

Santa finally found the present between a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Zac Efron and a set of power tools.  He picked it up and trudged toward the entrance of the bag.  The Sloth's sadness was lifting, but he still needed his Christmas present.

"Sssllloooth," Santa said.  "III haaave aaa prreeezzeennnt foor yyoouu."

The Sloth's eyes lit up, and he stopped playing Pat-a-cakes with Beowulf.  Gingerly, he plucked the present from Santa's arms (Santa's fingers were still a bit stiff).  Eagerly ripping the wrapping paper, he squealed with glee as he read the title on the box.  ("Squealed" is a relative term; it sounded more like a low moan.)  Santa offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

"THANK YOU, SANTA!  I LOVE IT!" the Sloth said.  

"You're welcome," Santa said, shaking the last of the grogginess from his head.  Taking a deep breath, he gave Beowulf a salute.  "You've saved the world from mass extinction!"

"With my BARE HANDS!" Beowulf agreed.

Finally, Santa could get back to delivering presents.  With Santa's nod of approval, Beowulf escorted the Slow Sloth back to his cave in the Appalachians, where he sang "Silent Night" in sign language (with his BARE HANDS).  Soon the Slow Sloth was sleeping happily, dreaming of reading Herodotus when he awoke.

A little while later, Beowulf returned to Santa's sleigh.  The hero was humming triumphantly to himself.  "Since you're not time-stopped, and you're here with me," Santa suggested, "perhaps you could help me finish delivering these presents."

"I'd be happy to help you!" offered Beowulf.  "In fact, I'm really good at delivering presents with my BARE HANDS!"

Suddenly, Santa had a vision of broken windows and crumpled presents being stuffed down chimneys.  "Maybe I'll let you deliver the ones where the doors are unlocked…."



THE END (For now)





Happy Christmas, everyone!  God bless you and I hope you have a wonderful day celebrating our Savior's birth and singing kumbaya and exchanging presents with the ones you love.

Silent Night, PART 2

Silent Night, Part 1


There wasn't supposed to be any noise at all during the time-stop—not even the dust mites were breathing.  The only ones who could actually disturb the air to make sounds were Santa and his reindeer.  In fact, Santa had to keep moving around so he wasn't breathing the same air over and over again.  (The cyborg reindeer were outfitted with oxygen tanks, so they didn't have that problem.)  Even the Brownian motion of the air molecules was stopped.  Santa had long ago gotten used to the feeling of completely still air and total silence—like someone had shoved cotton in his ears.  

But there was definitely a sound happening right now, he admitted, as he fiddled with the size settings of his bag of gifts on a rooftop.  It was a low thumping sound.  He paused.  Even the reindeer had cocked their heads to the side, listening.

"Blitzen, do a spectogram analysis—identify the source of the sound," he barked.  "And Dasher, give me a location and distance."  Meanwhile, he checked the readings on his time-stopper.  Everything seemed to be working normally.

After a few moments, Blitzen and Dasher had sent their results to the sleigh's main control screen.  Santa tried to scroll through, but it was hard to operate a touch-screen with gloves.  Meanwhile, the thumping was definitely getting louder, and there was a sniffling sound too.  Santa could feel his heart rate slowing down ever so slightly.

It was just as he had feared.  The words "SLOWICUS SLOTHICUS" flashed across the screen, followed by:

Current distance:  1 km

Current speed:  60 km/hr

Current direction:  Toward us.

The Slow Sloth slept in the Applalachain mountains.  He was a Time Beast, one of several who kept the Earth's time stream in check just by breathing.  The problem was, when the Slow Sloth got sad, time around him started to slow down.  If he got really sad, time slowed down so much it started to go backwards.  The last time that had happened, the planet experienced a mass extinction—the dinosaurs.  Their bodies had been trying to occupy the same space at the same time but twice (time going backwards was complicated).  According to the elves who had been watching from their time-protected workshop, it was pretty brutal.  It had taken an entire comedy team to cheer up the Sloth to allow time to continue after that.

Every year, Santa left the Slow Sloth a present to make sure he knew he was cared for.  This year Santa had selected a boxed set of the unabridged Histories of Herodotus (the Slow Sloth had a penchant for reading).  The set was deep in the bag of presents—Santa had been planning to drop it off at the Slow Sloth's cave on his way out of this time zone.  

Why had the Slowicus Slothicus woken up?  He almost never woke up during a time stop.  And on the rare occasion that he had (Santa could recall the year 1904, most recently), the Slowicus Slothicus was always very happy to see Santa and his cyborg reindeer.  What had made the Sloth so sad he was even slowing Santa down during a time-stop?

The answer came from a half a kilometer away.  "SANTA?  I DREAMED A REALLY BAD DREAM…." the Slow Sloth bellowed, sniffling.  It was strange to hear such a childlike sentence from a voice so deep.  The Sloth could speak and understand every language of every living creature—but not necessarily at an adult level.

Santa could feel the stiffness in his arms and legs as he stood and turned toward his bigger-on-the-inside bag.  His blood flowed thickly through his veins.  He told his arms to reach, to open the bag—told his feet to step inside, but by the time his hands were pulling at the drawstring, the giant Slow Sloth was sitting beside the apartment, eye level with the roof.

"I DREAMED I WAS ALL ALONE," the Sloth said, sniffling again. "AND WHEN I WOKE UP… I WAS…."

Santa could barely move now.  Time was slowing down faster than he had imagined possible.  Even if he got inside the bag now, he wouldn't be able to sort through the various items and select the Sloth's present in time.  His thoughts were becoming muggy; he knew he had to do something or else he would stop moving altogether.  And once Santa had caught up with the time-stop, the Sloth's sad mood could make the entire time zone—or even the whole world—slow down enough to go backwards.

Santa imagined future archaeologists digging up all of their bones and wondering if a giant asteroid had hit the earth.  He would have shuddered, if his muscles could have responded fast enough.  Instead, he ended up fumbling the drawstring of the bag of presents.

This was too big a problem for Santa to solve alone.

"Ruuuudooooooooolfffffffffff," he drawled, panic in his eyes.  "Caaaaaaallllllll fooooooor heeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllp!"

Luckily, Rudolph's distress signal usually travelled at the speed of light; even the Slow Sloth couldn't slow down electromagnetic waves that much.

There was only one person Santa knew could help him in times like these.




TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW in Silent Night, Part 3....

Silent Night, PART 1

It was the eve of Christmas.  The children lay snuggled in their beds, dreaming about sugarplums (whatever they are) and of Red Rider BB guns and of dahoo-doray singing in the morning.  The air was crisp, and the houses were adorned with icicles and tiny lights.  The world was silent and still.  Even the snowflakes had stopped midair.

Santa Claus was coming.

He adjusted the time-stop settings on his sleigh, making sure the entire time zone was frozen in the same moment.  Then he programmed the whole system for a smooth landing on the nearest rooftop.  The reindeers' metal joints creaked as they slowed to a halt.  He'd have to oil them soon.  And Rudolph's nose needed a new lightbulb.  "Good work, boys," he said, offering them carrots.  Even cyborg reindeer got hungry; although admittedly they ate less often than regular reindeer would in these working conditions.

Zipping up his low-friction silence jacket, he slipped down the chimney and into the living room of Little Suzie.  Despite having an unfortunately sappy name, Little Suzie was a happy child, and she had asked for what every girl wanted that year:  a working lightsaber.  Taking pity on her parents, he gave her a plastic telescopic one instead.

Oh, good—she'd left cookies and milk.  In order to keep up his strength during an extended time-stop, Santa needed lots of sugar and protein.  It'd be nice if they left out a hunk of steak every once in a while, he thought, but for some reason everyone wanted to serve him dessert.

Carefully, he placed a statue of the baby Jesus in the trough of Little Suzie's nativity scene.  The most important part of his job.

The next home didn't have a chimney, so he entered via his newly patented matter relocator (which was convenient, because Carlos had asked for a cello, and his brother Yunior wanted a new bike—both of which would have been hard to fit down a chimney).  Santa had a lot of high-tech gear.  His elves worked all year to make this night's seemingly infinite journey as quick and efficient as possible.  Time-stop was great, but it wreaked havoc on his sleep cycles.  After being awake for ridiculously long amounts of time (Mrs. Claus had calculated it a few years ago, but Santa didn't want to know), he was exhausted, and slept for weeks.  It was a good thing he was quasi-immortal, or he would be aging way faster than the rest of the world.

He was anxious to get all the puppies settled; they were having a little too much fun in his bigger-on-the-inside bag of presents.  It was hard to chase them all down.

It took a while, but eventually all the children's gifts were delivered for that time zone.  Santa was ready to move on to the next time one, but first he slipped into a church for a quick prayer.  When he had initiated the time-stop, they had been in the middle of Midnight Mass, and the choir was frozen in the middle of a grand "GLOOO-O-O-O-O-OOO-O-O-O-O—"  After his prayer, Santa released the time-stop, and they finished:  "OOO-O-O-O-O-OOO-O-O-O-O-ria."  If anyone noticed a man in a red silence suit slipping out the back doors of the church, no one said anything.

It wasn't until about halfway through the next time zone that Santa heard the ominous thumping noise.




TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW in Silent Night, Part 2....

Shells are like ears.

A conversation between me and my youngest sister (she's blonde but brilliant):

Me:  Did you know shells are like ears?

Blonde but Brilliant:  No.

Me:  Now you do.

BBB: … Okey.

Let me try to be more informative.

I remember once when I was small, I was listening to the sound of the ocean in a conch shell with my cousin.  She smiled at me and said she thought the ocean sound would stay in that shell for a long time.  That was when I began to wonder why the shell sounded like the ocean.  Was it recorded, like my cousin said, and could it run out?  I strained my ears to try to see if I could hear seagulls.

There was a shell in my kindergarten classroom, and I used to listen to it all the time.  The boys in my class said it sounded more like a toilet flushing.  I secretly agreed.  And that made sense with my cousin's theory, because there was a bathroom near our classroom, and not an ocean.

Later, in second or third grade, I was told that the sound of the ocean is caused by the echo of the blood pumping through your ears.  Rather than feeling disappointed that I wasn't hearing the real ocean, I smiled when I heard that.  My blood sounded like the ocean.

At home, I liked to listen to that shell my cousins and I had found on the beach and think of the ocean flowing through my veins.

Now I know that the shell is actually a resonant chamber—it emphasizes certain frequencies with the noise around you and creates the ocean-like sound.  Our speech and hearing systems include several resonant chambers—namely the vocal tract (the space between the larynx and the lips) and the outer ear.  Like a shell, the ear doesn't change shape.  The ear acts as a resonant chamber:  as sound waves pass through the outer ear and ear canal, these structures vibrate with the sound and accentuate certain frequencies.  Conveniently, frequencies important to understanding speech are emphasized in our ears.  (Cause and effect are fuzzy here—which developed first:  speech frequency contrasts or ears?  Or was it simultaneous/complex?)  Apparently, the world agrees that shells resonate with frequencies that sound a lot like the ocean.

That means that everywhere there is sound, the sound of the ocean can also be there.  You just need a good resonator, like a shell.

It also means that shells are like ears.

Peanut Soup and Saving the Elephants

This is a Ghanaian soup I've been making a lot, and I've modified it to use ingredients I can find at the grocery store.  I know it sounds really weird, but it is totally delicious!

Ingredients:

1 can stewed tomatoes

3 overflowing tablespoons of peanutbutter (any kind will do)

about a quarter of an onion

1/8 cup (ish) oil (I usually use olive if I have enough)

1 tbsp garlic

1 tbsp ginger

1 tsp paprika or cayenne pepper (optional)

1 or 2 tbsp salt

a few shakes of black pepper

Chop up the onion as fine as you can, then put all of the ingredients in a pot.

Mash them with a potato masher until it's one consistency.

Let simmer for about a half hour or until you feel like eating.

Serve on top of rice.  Eat with your right hand.  Serves two or three.

A note about oils:  In Ghana, this meal is made using palm oil.  Palm oil is, in my opinion, delicious.  However, I recently learned that most of the sources of palm oil to the United States are palm tree plantations that are destroying the habitat of Asian elephants.  A lot of products are made with palm oil—unfortunately a few popular brands of peanutbutter are too.  Whenever I have a choice and can afford it (often there is no price difference), I try to choose products that do not contain palm oil, and I'd like to encourage you all to do the same.  We can be environmental superheroes—even in our choice of peanutbutter!  Let's do what we can to save the elephants!

"Muscuchar"

In our lab, sometimes when niños are being tested in their nondominant language, they make up words.  Sometimes they make up entire sentences out of nonsense syllables; this is always fun.  But occasionally there's a stroke of brilliance.  One of the niños in our lab used the verb "muscuchar", which didn't make sense in context, but I decided it's too good to pass up.  I hereby declare that "muscuchar" is a combination of the words "música" (music) and "escuchar" (to listen), and it means "to listen to music."  Update your Spanish dictionaries, people, this is going to be big.

Relatedly, today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, so my church is having a HUGE celebration.  My youth group is singing a few maricachi-esque songs to our lovely mother, and I am playing the violin!  The last nine days we've been saying a novena and singing lots of awesome Mary songs and people have even been doing traditional Native dances after Mass (Matachines).  I haven't been able to go most days (finals....), but when I have been able to, it's been really fun!  And yesterday (today too I think) a bunch of the Jovenes put on a play about Juan Diego, the Native Mexican guy who Mary gave the visions to—it was the perfect mixture of respectful and also silly (my friends playing the Bishop and his lackeys were pretty funny).  I love my parish; we don't take ourselves too seriously but we DO take God very seriously!

Latin America has a special devotion to Mary; in large part this is because she was the one who evangelized them and brought them to Jesus.  She has appeared miraculously many times in different places, and her Guadalupan vision is one of the most famous ones.  I actually got to see the cloth with her image on it when I went to Mexico as a senior in highschool.  It hasn't biodegraded even after all these years—and scientists can't find any paintbrush marks on it either, apparently.  Yesterday, the priest was talking about some photographers who found that Mary's eyes had a reflection of someone in them and that the photographs of her eyes looked like live eyes.  I'm not super well versed on the miracles associated with this image of Mary, but I do know that it was because of that vision that many Native Mexicans learned about Jesus.  (Let's face it; the conquistadors did a horrible job at evangelizing!)  So it's a bit deal for Mexican Catholics, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

We are praising God for His great love for us—that He was born of a poor peasant woman so He could die for us and earn us passage into Heaven.  And of course we are saying thank-you to Maria for showing us Jesus, who is the most important Person in our lives.

I'm sure Mama Maria is muscuchando to her children today—and I hope we are making her smile!

Frogs and Chinchillas

I have recently discovered the following fact:

Studies have shown that frogs and chinchillas have auditory categorical perception.

My speech science professor told us this in class, and I didn't believe it until I checked on google scholar.  Not the categorical perception thing—that's not too surprising, really.  What's weird is that people are actually studying the categorical perception of frogs and chinchillas.  They're sitting frogs and chinchillas down in labs and playing them different sounds to figure out if they can tell the difference between tiny differences in the sounds.  Frogs, maybe that's a little understandable, if weird, but chinchillas?!  Chinchillas can't even get wet.  Why on earth would anyone test the categorical perception of a chinchilla?

Science continues to astound me.

Mandela and also Ice

Yesterday I heard that Nelson Mandela has passed away.  Let's give thanks to God for such a wonderful man.  I am a huge fan; even when he was imprisoned for twenty-seven years, he kept hope and also stuck to his morals, supporting only nonviolent protests against apartheid.  The world would be a very different place if he hadn't lived.

(I know, I know, the contributions of the more violent factions of anti-apartheid movements were crucial.  And I know he was human and imperfect also.  But this isn't an essay on history and politics.  It is a memorial to a great man.)

May God bless Nelson Mandela and his surviving loved ones.  And may He bless South Africa, the nation Mandela fought so hard to liberate.  They have come a long way since the early days of apartheid, but there is still much to be done to bring justice and equality there.  May God guide President Zuma and the other leaders of South Africa to abandon corrupt economic traditions and practices and may He bring peace and plenty to the many who struggle to survive there.

* * *

In unrelated news, I'm iced in today.  Like, there's an inch of ice on the ground.  I really thought the weather people were making up fish tales—this is unreal!  Me and Roommate broke a spatula trying to get the ice off her car so she could move it to a space *not* under a tree.  Not as important news as the above, but it's life.

The trees are encased in ice, and the world is half-white, half-glassed, glowing with silver sunlight.  The air is cold, wet, and smells like fresh snow.  When I walk outside, there are places that are so packed with ice that I glide atop without leaving so much as a footprint.  It is absolutely beautiful; what a wonderful artist our God is!

" 'Thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality"

Here's a surprising turn of events:  I am writing today about the economy, and a bit about politics.

BBC news the other day reported that Pope Francis is taking a strong stance against "trickle-down" economic theory.  He feels that such economic theories support a system that excludes those who have nothing.  Here is a section from his recent apostolic exhortations:

"Just as the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality.  Such an economy kills.  How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?  This is a case of exclusion.  Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving?  This is a case of inequality.  [...]  The excluded are not the 'exploited' but the outcast, the 'leftovers'."  (From item 53 of the exhortation)

I am reminded by his last statement of the moment in Suzanne Collins's story Catching Fire when Katniss and Peeta are at a party thrown by the Capital and find out that people there throw up what they've eaten just so they can eat more—while the marginalized are starving in the rest of the country.

Allow me to continue quoting Pope Francis:

"In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.  This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.  Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting."  (From item 54).

While I don't know enough about economics to propose a well-thought-out alternative economic system, I completely agree with Pope Francis that something has got to change.

This is a bold move, as are many moves by Pope Francis.  He is not afraid to speak his mind about current issues—and he is not mincing his words!  A few weeks ago, I saw a photo of him supporting some anti-fracking activists.

From what I understand, Pope Francis is generally liked by many people—including some atheists.  (I add a caveat that I know quite a few Protestants that aren't crazy about some of his more radical statements.)  People seem to like it when he comes right out and says something "radical", like that atheists could still go to heaven, or when he shows compassion to people most others would ignore, or when he reaches out to teenagers and takes a selfie with them.  I'm a huge fan of Pope Francis, because he is providing a great example of living his faith and doing his best to communicate God's great love for the world.  Even if he wasn't being received well, I think he'd still act the way he's acting.  He is getting some pushback even now, and that isn't stopping him from showing the world how to be a witness to Christ.  It seems to me that he is really letting the Holy Spirit guide his actions and his words.

Many atheists I speak with believe that it is the job of the Church to sit by and provide solace for those who need it—not to become involved in social justice issues.  Pope Francis's current counterexample is this situation—a messed up economy that is causing the marginalization of many people loved by God but ignored by the world.  

My counterexample:  South Africa during apartheid.  Apartheid was largely invented by a group of white Dutch Reform Protestants who believed that what they did was right (or at least claimed to).  Because of this policy, countless individuals died at the hands of their totalitarian government and exclusive economic and legal actions.  Other denominations (including Catholics) for a while stood by and did little more than provide service to the poor and solace for those who needed it.  But the people cried out for more.  They cried out for their churches to become involved in the political struggle.  It was wrong, they said, for religious leaders to stand aside and watch people be murdered, marginalized, and enslaved.  And I agree.  It is wrong for the Church, or for any people (religious or not), to sit by and watch without even speaking out when great injustice is done.  Even if their views are labeled as "dangerous".  It was considered "dangerous" to speak out against apartheid in South Africa.  In fact, it was considered so dangerous that many were tortured and killed for doing so.

The second Vatican counsel directly addressed the apartheid issue, urging Catholics to combat justice and oppression.  By the 1980s, churches were increasing their involvement in political issues surrounding apartheid.  Religious leaders were criticized for not becoming involved in politics to stand up for those who needed defending—and because of the cries of the people, those churches took a stand.

In fact, it is an issue of religious freedom to be able to speak out on political issues.  If a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, etc. is allowed to worship in his own private space, but is then forced to conform to mainstream opinion (or at least not speak out against it) regarding serious moral issues, that is not religious freedom.  If he is allowed to pray but not act, not allowed to do what he thinks is right in a secular situation just because his moral judgement is influenced by his religion—that is also not religious freedom.  It is, in fact, demanding that he be untrue to himself.  Sometimes I feel that in today's society, the religious are asked to be silent merely because they are religious.  At least, that's often how I feel on the East Coast.  (Texas is a little different, at least in my experience, and may even have the opposite problem sometimes, which is also not good!  Silencing the minorities has never worked well in the past and I don't think it's working well today either.)  It is the moral responsibility of any person, theist or not, to speak out against oppression and stand up for those who are marginalized or hurt.  

If you want to read the rest of what Pope Francis said in his apostolic exhortation address thingy, here is a link to it.  I haven't read the whole thing yet, but everything I've read so far has been to the point, eloquent, and awesome!  He writes a lot about evangelization and how to share the Word of God with the world.

Apostolic Exhortation, given on November 24, 2013

Basically, go Pope Francis!  What a witness!

Tomatillo-ey Basiley-wasiley Chicken

I got to cook for my family the other night!  No, not the turkey—I was a humble kitchen peon during the Thanksgiving festivities.  But a different night I invented a yummy chicken thing.  Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1.5 pounds of chicken thighs
7 tomatillos
about half of a large sweet onion
about a half of a green bell pepper
a few handfuls of fresh basil
a few handfuls of fresh thyme (or a tablespoonish of dried thyme)
about a tablespoon of garlic
about a quarter cup of olive oil
salt (maybe two tablespoons)
sugar (maybe two tablespoons)
a little water (just to make sure the chicken is more or less submerged)

1.  Cut the vegetables into smallish slices or chunks.
2.  Cut up the thyme and cut the basil into ribbons.
3.  Put the vegetables, thyme, basil, garlic, salt, sugar, olive oil, and water into a pot.  Put the pot at medium-high heat to get the water hot/boiling.
4.  Cut the chicken thighs into strips (or chunks).
5.  Put the chicken into the pot and make sure to bring it to a boil.
6.  Let it boil for a long time—an hour or so—to let everything get really soft.  Stir occasionally.  I let it boil uncovered so as the chicken gets cooked, the water boils away for a thicker sauce.
7.  Serve on pasta, maybe with parmesian.  Serves five.

Enjoy!

NERDSPLOSION

Me and Roommate went to watch The Hunger Games:  Catching Fire midnight premiere showing on November 22nd at 12:01 am (brilliant, by the way—intensely scary, dark, and freaky, and brilliantly done)—I was crying for, like, half the movie.  I highly recommend it; my hats are off to the whole production team.

And today, November 23rd, is the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who (I think I will get to watch it with my family this evening, if all goes well—or at least as soon as possible)!

Two additional excitement factors: in between these epic events, I got to see MRI scans of my professor's brain and also went to my church's Friday evening charismatic prayer service after Mass (which involves a lot of dancing).  AND I am about to get on a plane to go home to visit my family for Thanksgiving week!

Now all we need is some Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings added to the mix.  Let's see....  I shall wear my Hufflepuff sweatshirt and also the One Ring and wield my lightsaber while fighting off the Borg and reciting lines from that fencing scene in The Princess Bride......  Maybe I should calm down a little during my flight back home.  I might scare the flight attendants.

*insert epic battle against the Borg here—well, actually, really it's a giant packing and housecleaning spree done to nerd music*

*Happy and exhausted, the Wug Tamer slumps onto the couch.*  Well, that's done.  Now I just have to be patient until it's time to watch Doctor Who.......

I am the MOST excited nerd!  As you read these words, I am doing the very-excited-nerd dance.  I don't really care when you're reading the words—I'm probably still doing the very-excited-nerd dance.

Paisley thyroid cartilages are all the rage this year.

The larynx is going to be my best friend in the years to come, so I figure I should give it an introduction on the blog.  It's time to MEET YOUR LARYNX!

Alright, everyone touch your throat, just under your chin.  That first protrusion you feel is your larynx, or your voicebox.  Keep your hand on your throat and try the following three things:

1.  Say "buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz".  You feel the vibration?  That's because to make a voiced sound like "zzzzz", your larynx closes the vocal folds.  The air flowing through pushes them open and they snap closed—that's the vibration.  How quickly the folds vibrate determines the frequency, or pitch of your speech.  Closing your vocal folds is what allows you to use your voice.

2.  Now say "hissssssssssss".  Your throat shouldn't be vibrating as much.  That's because for a sound like "ssssssssss", your vocal folds are open, and they don't vibrate.  When you say sounds like this, the vocal folds open up.  So when you're talking, they probably open and close, open and close—in addition to vibrating every time they're closed.  (I'll describe this in more detail in another post.)  It's quite a workout!

3.  Now you ready for something really freaky?  Swallow.  Feel as your larynx is pulled up toward the base of your tongue.  This is to protect you from breathing your food when you swallow.  (When I first learned this years ago, I couldn't stop thinking about it for days.  Every time I swallowed, I could feel my voice box going up my throat.)

I feel that is an adequate introduction to your larynx.  Now that you're acquainted with it, would you like to know what it looks like?

A few weeks ago, some of my girl friends got together and had a Dr. Who-watching and paper-larynx-making extravaganza.  (You know, a typical girls night in.)  Our Speech Science class had a larynx-making contest.  My larynx won!

This is a view from the front, looking diagonally (if this were your larynx, your chin would appear in the top left corner of the picture, sort of):

 Check out that gorgeous paisley thyroid cartilage.

And here it is from the back.  The weird tongue-looking thing is the epiglottis, which reaches back and covers up the vocal folds when you swallow.

Mmhmm.  VERY stylish.  If your thyroid cartilage is anything but paisley, I'd look into getting a replacement.  And fuzzy vocal folds are VERY chic.

God's strangest creation

I had a post all ready for you guys about the larynx and its various structures, but that is going to have to wait a few days.  Breaking news, guys:  I have held one hemisphere of a human brain.  The right hemisphere, to be exact.  And I touched the left hemisphere too.

On Friday after Speech Science class, my professor pulled out a giant tupperware—the size you'd use if you made enough spaghetti for like seven or eight extra people—and opened it to reveal a human brain floating in brownish formaldehyde.  The brain was cut down the middle—remember when I told you guys about the hemispheres of the brain?  And the language centers of the brain?  I got to see what they look like for real.  And then I got to poke them and peek inside.  Don't worry, I was wearing a rubber glove!

The brain is heavier than I expected—it's fairly dense.  And with the meningeal linings (the stiff cling-wrap that keeps the brain matter in the correct shape), it was about as pliant as cooked chicken—but smooth, like silly putty.  It was the meningeal linings that kept the brain from turning into porridge.  Little bits of the outermost meninges were peeling off.  And I got to see a bit of the infamous Circle of Willis!

The human brain, is, in my opinion, pretty much the strangest of God's creations—except maybe the cuttlefish.

As I held the brain in my hand, I was acutely aware that someone's soul used to reside there.  Once upon a time, bajillions of tiny electrochemical processes were happening all the time in that brain as its previous resident went for a jog, held a spatula to flip pancakes in the morning, thought about a story he'd read in the Sunday paper, talked about the weather with his neighbors.  The brain was healthy, so he probably did not suffer any kind of major cognitive decline before he died.  Now it is nothing but a vacant house, its windows dark and its hallways dusty.

We took a tour of the empty house, naming structures that used to be used for memory, balance, emotional regulation, decision-making, moving fingers and toes, reminding the heart to beat and the ribcage to expand.

As we watched our professor pulling bits of the brain apart to show us internal structures, our eyes sent electrical impulses via the optic nerve to the occipital lobes of our brains, where the information somehow appeared as a picture in our minds.  The words he said were just vibrations in the air that moved the tympanic membrane, which in turn moved the bones in the middle ear and eventually was converted into an electrochemical signal in the cochlea, which was sent along a complicated neural path to Wernicke's area.  And somehow the firing of neurons in Wernicke's area turned into words in our minds.  Those words and images seem to be nothing more than electrical impulses in the brain, and yet somehow there is meaning to them in our minds, and somehow we understand—communication!  Just like the words you are reading now.

Consciousness is weird, guys.  Minds are weird.  It would make more sense if our brains were just like electrochemical computers, firing away as we functioned in our environment, unaware that we even exist.  But then God had to make us in His own image and likeness, eh?  Give us minds to make sense of the firing of those neurons, even direct it sometimes.  He gave us intellect.  And beyond that, a soul—while the intellect is prone to the functions of the physical structures of the human brain, the soul is independent.

Alright, now I'm getting way out there.  Somebody pull in my kite string.

With my feet on the ground, I repeat:  yesterday in class, I held a human brain.

It's time for.... the POETRY APPRECIATION CHAIR.

Hopefully I'm not as awful at poetry as the Vogons in Douglas Adams's famous Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, who used their poetry as a sick sort of torture device.

Sit yourselves down in the dreaded Poetry Appreciation Chair, my friends, because my roommate has those word magnet things.  I'd been eyeing them for weeks, and the other day I finally caved.  I got up early, made myself some eggs and tea, and got to work.  The first few words I pulled out of the bag were "enormous" "gorgeous", "diamond", and "blood".  Naturally I composed a poem about the diamond trade.  If you can't tell, I'm not a big fan.  

The magnet poem game is a favorite for writers, because you can really only use most words one time.  And there's the whole finding-the-right-grammatical-endings-and-prepositions dilemma, which adds to the fun!

Then I felt bad for putting such a sad and angry poem on our fridge, so I compensated by adding this little touch of randomness underneath of it.  It is entitled, "Well, that clears things up."

Catholic Celebrities are more fun than gun shows

So this weekend there was a giant Catholic music festival in Mesquite, and a bunch of people from my parish (including me, as you've probably gathered) went to volunteer there.

At the site of the venue, there were two events:  our giant hispanic Catholic music thing, and also across the street a gun show.  I was a greeter/hostess/smile-and-wave-er during the morning, so I got to meet lots of people coming to both shows.  It was pretty funny; big families with lots of kids would come by, speaking rapidly in Spanish, and then we'd get the occasional confused pair of slow-talking Southern guys looking for the gun show (often sporting giant hunting rifles).  I always informed the gun-show gents that our Jesus music show was probably more interesting and they should come inside—even if they wouldn't understand anything, at least it'd be exciting!  They all politely declined.  (Drat!)

The event was a huge success.  About thirty artists played music that day, I think (although at some point I lost count).  And I got to meet quite a few of them—including Jon Carlo, a fairly famous Dominican Republican singer.  I am still learning about the hispanic Catholic music scene, so this was super exciting for me.  (I know that sounds like a very specific genre of music, but it's actually really popular and pretty widespread.)  I especially liked helping out backstage and handing artists their awards onstage.

Our very own Padre was one of the leaders of the event—it turns out he's something of a rockstar in the North Texas Catholic community.  (Not literally; I don't think he plays rock music.  Unlike some other priests I might know back in MD.)

I also got to meet Evelyn Matias, a miracle story.  She's a Catholic artist who has multiple sclerosis or some other type of degenerative disease, and she has persevered as a singer despite all the odds against her.  Yesterday, she needed to be carried onto and off of the stage, but she was smiling the whole time, and she was so excited to sing to God.  A few years ago, she was pregnant, and the doctors told her that both she and the baby would die so she should get an abortion.  She refused to abort her child, and as it turns out, her daughter is quite healthy—and very talkative!  Evelyn's daughter tried to teach me a hand game, but about halfway through, I realized she might have been just making it up as she went.

Also, while Priscila Ángel was singing, one woman had a vision of the Virgin Mary onstage, and she took a video of it with her phone.  I did not have the vision (especially because I was backstage at the time), but I did see the phone video.  It was pretty amazing!  Priscila is really holy—she used to be a secular artist, but then she had a conversion experience of some kind and decided to dedicate her work to the Lord.  

(By the way, my callada (quiet) girl friend was the one responsible for most of my celebrity pictures.  She'd ask me if I wanted a picture with someone, and when I asked who it was, she'd say she didn't know—someone famous, a singer!  Let's go meet them!  So me and Callada got lots of pictures with celebrities whose names I learned AFTER the pictures.)

At first glance, the music festival looked pretty secular—people getting photos with their favorite artists (and sometimes with artists they didn't know), and plenty of venders selling CDs, t-shirts, rosaries, jewelry, tacos.  There was even a clown.  But the whole event was dedicated to Jesus!  Okey, maybe the tacos were secular (until we said grace before eating).  But even the clown directed all his conversations to Christ—when my friends and I got a picture with him, he asked us what face we would make if Jesus showed up at our door, and that was the picture.  And after each song, the artists directed the applause to God, giving glory to Him instead of to themselves.

Fun fact:  I think I am getting better and better at convincing people that I'm not a gringa.  I think I was the only non-native Spanish speaker at the event (besides the arena workers), and one of my friends said that when I don't stutter or make stupid grammar mistakes, I actually sound pretty natural.  I did a little victory dance when he said that.

In other news, today I might learn how to play mariachi music on my violin after church.

Gracias, Dios, for such a crazy fun weekend, and for teaching me to give glory to You always, even when I'm talking to a clown!

"He falled them off the cliff."

It's time for LAB ADVENTURES!

The lab I work in is tracking the language production of bilingual kids (Spanish/English bilinguals).  We record them telling us a story and then we type what they said into a computer program, where we code their utterances for grammar.

When kids are acquiring language, they go through phases where they "overgeneralize" rules.  That is to say, they've learned a rule, such as "-ed" = past tense, and then they use that rule even in situations where it's not necessary (such as irregular verbs).  That's how we get utterances like "goed" and "wented", or even "falled".

The fact that the regular rule is overgeneralized here can be explained by Pinker's description of the dual route model of word retrieval...

...and many linguists' observation of the U-shaped Curve. 

A slightly more complicated circumstance is transitivity.  Transitive verbs are verbs that can take an object.  Like "kick."  You can kick a soccer ball, a shin, or a brick wall.  Or "eat."  You can eat a pizza, a bowl of oatmeal, or some brains.  But "sit" is NOT a transitive verb.  The following sentence is ungrammatical in adult Standard American English (SAE):

*Mary sat John.

Mary can sit on John (owch), but she cannot do the verb "sit" to "John" like in the above sentence.

When children are learning about how verbs work, they learn the rule that some verbs are transitive (can take an object).  And at first, they tend to overgeneralize this rule.  They will make verbs like "fall", which really can't take an object in SAE, and use it to mean "to make fall"—which must take an object.  Consider the title of this post, which is an utterance I might encounter in the lab any day:

"And he falled them off the cliff."

This is super cool because first of all, notice that "falled" should be "fell".  The child is overgeneralizing the past tense marker used for regular verbs here.  

And second of all, "fall" is NOT a transitive verb.  That sentence is totally ungrammatical in SAE.  But this is a natural part of language acquisition in children!  (For the minimalists out there, they've added a causative node (vP), and for the semanticists, they are adding an argument.)  Either way, it looks to me like they're overgeneralizing the rule that verbs can become transitive.  Or at least overgeneralizing a particular argument structure.  There are plenty of documented examples of children saying things like "She poured the cup with milk", which is again applying a different argument structure to the verb.

After a while, children learn that they've been overgeneralizing and learn to apply the rule(s) at appropriate times.  That's when their grammar comes to resemble adult grammar.

Someone in my lab pointed out that the child might either not know the word "push" (unlikely, I think), or that they just retrieved another word while searching for the word "push".  These are possible, but this happens too frequently (and systematically), in my opinion, to blame it all on errors instead of overgeneralization.  Furthermore, Steven Pinker (and other semanticists) might argue that even if they were replacing "push", they are still overapplying a transitivity rule.  But the semantics argument, while super awesome, is a discussion for another day.

Regardless of the cause of such utterances, I sure do enjoy them!

God likes puns. And geeky astronomy analogies.

In church the other day, Padre used a great analogy.  I'm sure it's been used before, but I like it a lot.  He said that Mary is like the moon.  She sure does shine bright, but her light is just a beautiful reflection of the light of God.

I'm going to expand on this for a moment.  God is the source of light; He is the bright star at the center of the solar system that provides heat and light to everyone in the system.  Without Him, the solar system wouldn't exist.  He provides meaning and order and stability as well as light and beauty.  The moon and the earth and the other planets and celestial bodies are beautiful indeed, when the sun is shining on them.  When it's not, we can't see them; their beauty is diminished because we can't see them.

Gravity is also an aspect of this analogy.  If God is the sun, He requires that the whole solar system (i.e. everyone) revolve around Him.  This may seem selfish at first glance, but then let's look closer:  What benefit does the sun get by having all those planets around it?  It would shine just as bright without them.  They do not augment its glory in any way.  But what would the planets (and moons, and asteroids) do without the Sun?  They would be wandering exoplanets, floating freely in space but with no direction, no purpose, no light, no constant relationship with other celestial bodies.  They are at the whim of the universe, ready to be influenced by any old thing they pass with gravity.  Although that seems poetic, it also seems a bit empty to me.  But when a celestial body revolves around the sun, its beauty can be appreciated; it receives light and warmth, and (if it is in the habitable zone), even possibilities for life.  When they allow the light of the Sun to warm them, they are infinitely more beautiful—dazzling, in fact.  By pulling the whole solar system around it, the sun gives all good things to the planets (and moons and asteroids).

(The analogy breaks down when we get far enough away from our solar system to hit the neighboring ones, because unlike the sun, God is all-powerful and He actually actively created everything in existence, and there are no other gods that can compete with Him.  He is the ONLY provider of light; without His love, we are really just lonely bodies in the dark.)

When we let Him shine on us and reflect that light to others, we can even bring light into dark places—like the moon at night!  We should all learn to be like Mary, who gives all glory to God and lets His light reflect off her.  By doing this, she becomes more beautiful and also brings God's light and joy to others.

Now, this doesn't work in Spanish, but in English, there's a great pun:  Mary is the moon, and she reflects the light of the Son!

Zombie Week Day 7

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN, EVERYONE!

Here's a thought to bring Zombie Week to a close:

On a completely different note, today I am dressed as a Jedi Knight disguised as a Hogwarts student (i.e. myself).  I hope you all get to eat lots of sweets and enjoy the frivolity of the day!

Zombie Week Day 6

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

You know how I told you that the left side of the brain is usually responsible for language?  Well, it's even weirder than that.  There's a part of the left hemisphere that is mostly responsible for understanding language, and another part of the left hemisphere that is mostly responsible for producing language using grammar!

Unfortunately, a lot of our evidence for these "language centers" in the brain comes from people with some kind of acquired brain injury (like a stroke or a localized trauma) in those areas.  When brain damage causes difficulty speaking or understanding language—but understanding the world and how things work is mostly okey—the patient is diagnosed with aphasia, or impaired language.  So someone with aphasia might know how to use a toothbrush, but if you were to ask them about it, either they might not understand you or might not be able to answer you.

If Broca's area is damaged, most people present with impaired expression, and it is harder for them to make grammatical sentences.  They are more likely to use "telegraphic" speech, like "Doctor...leg...bad."  I am currently reading a paper about how Broca's area deals with complicated pattern recognition that is difficult for most other species. (I'll write about pattern recognition in Broca's later—thanks to a friend who showed me this paper!)

Notice that Broca's area (producing grammatical language) is very close to the motor strip, which controls motor movement.  So people who have damage to Broca's area often also have muscular problems and muscle-planning problems too.  So basically, talking is hard!

Damage to that other area, Wernicke's, causes problems understanding language.  Patients with Wernicke's aphasia may talk a lot, but what they say doesn't make sense.  They'll say things like "Isn't that terrible?  I know what they're saying.  The thing comes in right here and goes out and they say do that and two, and ten, and twenty, and five of them.  I don't really do that stuff."  The grammar is fine, mostly, but they talk and talk and nobody understands what they're saying.  And they don't understand what other people are saying—but if it's really bad, they don't know that they don't understand.  (This makes therapy very interesting!)

There are other kinds of damage that can be done.  If the arcuate fasciculus (the axons connecting Broca's and Wernicke's areas) is damaged, but nothing else, the patient may be able to understand things pretty well and have pretty good speech (except for some word-finding errors), but they won't be able to repeat things.  They will hear what is said, and their Wernicke's area will interpret it for them, but it won't make it to Broca's area to be spoken.  Or if there is damage to the areas of the brain surrounding the language areas (but not in the arcuate fasciculus), they may have impaired understanding or expression, but they will be able to repeat things.  And if there is damage right at the beginning of the main artery that supplies blood to the left hemisphere's language centers, the patient will probably be diagnosed with global aphasia—understanding, repeating, speaking—everything is impaired.

It's complicated—and remember too that every brain is wired a little differently!

This has been a tour of the language centers of the brain as evidenced by aphasia.

Zombie Week Day 5

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

The vertebra that holds up the skull (the very top one) is called the "atlas" vertebra, named of course after the famous Greek Titan who held the world on his shoulder.  You know what that implies?  That we have BIG brains.  There could be whole worlds in those brains!

Zombie Week Day 4

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

This fact is relevant to both zombies and vampires.

The main arteries responsible for supplying blood to the brain are called the carotids (left and right) and the vertebral arteries (also left and right).  These blood vessels run up through the neck and meet at the Circle of Willis, which supplies blood to the six major cerebral arteries (three on each side).

What does this mean for vampires?  Well, I hear they always "go for the jugular", but if they prefer to drink freshly oxygenated blood from the lungs (which I imagine might be tastier), they could try for the carotids.  It might be a little messier, with a bit more digging around to get to it, but maybe it's worth it.  I'm not a vampire, so I wouldn't know.

What does it mean for zombies?  Well, the carotids and vertebral arteries keep those brains nice and fresh.

Zombie Week Day 3

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

Saint Catherine of Siena is a super inspiring saint—she had lots of visions of the Lord and wrote many inspiring prayers.  She was also called a Doctor of the Church because of her mystical theological writings for the faith—she is one of three women to hold that title.  (The other two lovely women are Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux.)

Time for some freaky Catholic stuff, guys.  When Catherine of Siena died, she was originally buried in Rome.  But her head was removed and then taken to the Saint Dominic Basilica in Siena, Italy, where it is kept in a reliquary.

Here is a picture of Saint Catherine of Siena's severed head.

Although the theme of this week has a silly title, I don't mean to be irreverent to Saint Catherine.  She is super hard-core saint and she was absolutely devoted to Jesus Christ!  I think it's cool that her entire head is a relic.  Especially because some of her most major contributions to the faith were her mystical writings.  That took a lot of brainpower (and Holy Spirit)!

Happy Sunday, everyone.

Zombie Week Day 2

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

Most people in the world are right handed.

Wait, I thought this fact was about brains, you say.  Well, it is.  The reason most people are right-handed has to do with the functions of the right and left hemispheres.

I know popular culture teaches that the "right brain is for creativity and the left brain for analysis."  Well, actually, this is largely false.  The hemispheres of the brain do appear to specialize, but not really that way.

The left brain is responsible for the movement of the right side of the body, visual processing from the right half of your field of vision, and processing of language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).  

The right brain moves and receives senses from the left side of the body, and it is largely responsible for spatial reasoning and pragmatics, social skills, reading emotions, recognizing faces, and things like that. 

Now you can see why being left-handed is strange.  Most people choose from an early age to write with their right hand because the language centers of the brain can easily communicate with that hand (left brain controls right hand).  But lefties are using the hand controlled by the other side!

Many lefties are still lateralized like right-handers—that is, their left brain houses the language centers.  When these people write, the motor message has to go from the left side of the brain to the right side of the brain and then down to their left hand (the message has an extra step to take).  

But some lefties have different lateralization—either both sides of the brain are involved in language, or the right side is more involved in language.  So in conclusion, left-handers are cool!

Take these statements with a grain of salt, though.  Just because a part of the brain specializes in something doesn't mean that other parts of the brain don't participate at all.  

Please enjoy this cool case study done to show the different functions of the right and left hemisphere.  Although the reporter (and even the researchers, to some extent) are simplifying the situation, it is a good bit of evidence for hemispheric specialization.

Zombie Week Day 1

Welcome to Zombie week, the best week for random facts about brains.  Check back each day for your daily dose of BRAINS.

Today's fact:

The term "grey matter" actually refers to the "soma" or "body" of the neurons in the brain.  The soma is where the nucleus and some other major organelles are found.  Grey matter is found in the most superficial parts of the brain's folds—if you look at a cross-section of the brain, grey matter is in the shaded bits:

The "axons", or tails(ish) of the neurons are called "white matter."  It is the white matter that carries messages from one part of the brain to the other.

So in P. G. Wodehouse's famous comedies, when Bertie refers to Jeeves's "grey matter", he is actually just referring to the surface layers of the folds of Jeeves's brain.  Technically, he should tell Jeeves to use his "white matter" also, because what use is a neuron if it isn't communicating with other neurons?  But I don't think Bertie has really thought it out that far.

Riding rollercoasters for Jesus

This weekend, I went with my parish youth group to Six Flags for World Youth Day (North Texas).  No, Pope Francis wasn't there, but Bishop Deshotel was—along with hundreds and hundreds of Catholic Youths from all around the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Most of the day was spent enjoying Six Flags—which, I learned, is named for the six different flags that have flown over Texas: Spain, France, Mexico, Texas, the USA, and the Confederate States.  (I suppose here they acknowledge the Confederate secession as more legitimate than we do up north.)  There was much screaming and teasing and games-playing.  For lunch, we went back to the parking lot and ate burritos and donuts.  Classy and delicious!

One of the rides is the Sixflags Sky something-or-other, where you go up on a tower suuuuuper high and slowly come down—you can see for miles and miles.  Texas is flat, guys.  Not a bump or a mountain or a molehill in sight from up there.  The only things that really add contour are the skylines of Dallas and Fort Worth.  And the hugely tall rollercoasters of Six Flags—including the super tall Superman tower-drop-ride thing, which terrified me immensely.

And then there was Mass.  There were *so* many jovenes gathered in that place to praise the Lord.  Although this youth group is a bit rambunctious and all over the place, when it is time for Mass, everyone was stoked.  The Mass was bilingual (which was good, because several people in our group don't speak English) and the choir sang some great songs, including a few by Matt Maher.  In the background was a huge wooden roller coaster, and way off in the distance, the Superman ride.  But the real star of the show was, of course, Jesus, present in every heart and physically present in the Eucharist.

If you'll allow me to step into something a little more personal, I would like to ask for your prayers, my friends.  I am still trying to find my place as a member of the Dallas Catholic community.  Obviously I am being impatient about this.  But having been accustomed to being surrounded by a faith community, now that I'm back in the finding process, I feel strange.  I have days when I feel like I am on the right track and everything is going to be wonderful, and there are other days when I still feel very lonely in my faith journey.

That was a mixed day.  I was surrounded by the youth group, and I was the butt of plenty of jokes (i.e. lots of attention)—and I was able to dish some jokes back too!  But right before Mass, I was hit with a wave of loneliness.  I missed my family, I missed el Grupo en Los Tres Brazos, I missed my friends at Christlife—I missed them all so much it hurt.  Suddenly I felt ripped away from my worship buddies.  Having to develop Jesus-filled friendships from scratch seemed like a burden, not a blessing.  I wanted to cry, but that would have been silly, surrounded by so many people who obviously want to become friends with me.  But the loneliness was there, in the pit of my stomach, right next to my fear of the towery-drop-Superman ride.  I was able to swallow my urge to cry and throw myself into worship for Mass.  It was beautiful, and the whole time I was praying, I was asking God to help me feel like I belong here.  I don't need much, I thought, just a friend or two who can challenge me to deepen my faith.

The Gospel reading was Luke 18:1 - 8.  The Lord said, "Will not God then secure the rights of His chosen ones who call out to him day and night?"  Bishop talked about how when we pray, God answers with what is best for us rather than exactly what we ask for.  For example, if we ask for something we really want, sometimes God answers with the patience to wait until it is time for us to receive that thing.

During the petitions, one of the prayers was "for anyone who feels isolated or alone—especially those who are youths in North Texas."  Right at that moment, although they didn't know it, everyone in that stadium was praying for me.  God was like, "hang on, there, girl.  Just hang on."

When it was time to receive the Precious Body of Christ, the redhead in the group surprised me.  She is one of the most rambunctious girls in the group, and she said to me that she would only receive the Eucharist on her tongue—because that is the most respectful way to receive it.  She doesn't bow down to anyone—except, of course, Jesus!

After Mass and after another coaster, about half the group wanted to do that scary Superman ride.  It's a tower ride and you get shot up to the top of the tower and then it drops you a bunch of times.  It is basically the epitome of scary for me.  I've done a small one like it before, but it took a LOT of coaxing to convince me to get on this bigger, faster tower.  It mocked my fears with its primary color scheme and happy Superman decor.

But Redhead held my hand and assured me that I would survive.  One of the guys teased me that God would take care of me—but I was stubborn in my fear.  My heart was beating so hard I could hear it in my ears, and my arms and legs were shaking.  The ride started with a huge engine noise, and then we shot straight up into the sky—and below us, the cities sprawled like an intense set of constellations in all directions.  It was actually pretty terrifying, especially for the first bit as we sped upward and then hovered, ready to drop at any moment—and I screamed my head off, half praying desperately, half using the Lord's name in vain: "OH DIOS OH GOD OH GOD AY POR DIOS"—and Redhead was kindly laughing at me.  We zoomed up and down and up and down, and finally the ride slowed and gently lowered us to the ground.  "See Kiki?  You were fine." She was right.  It was even kindof fun....  With a deep breath, I collected my shaking limbs and used them to walk out of the park.

When Redhead asked me to lead prayer over dinner that evening, I thanked God for the day at Sixflags and for Mass with the Bishop, and for friends that we can share our faiths—and our fears—with.

Now I am asking God for patience as I get to know people here.  Even though I sometimes feel alone, there are so many other people on this journey to love God in our lives.  He knows my heart; He knows what—and who—I need in my life.  And He knows where I need to be, and when.  I just have to learn to trust Him.

When a machine is broken....

One of my new school friends and I have been having super faith-sharing conversations after class.  She is a devout and passionate Muslim who is absolutely in love with God.  Among other things, we like to talk about what it is like to try to communicate the love of God to others when our world (both in religious and secular groups) so often feels apathetic or hateful toward Him.  

I am totally inspired by her devotion to God; she rejoices in her daily prayers and she loves to teach her children and her friends about how much God loves them.  Just by being in her presence and hearing her talk about God, I can see the peace and joy He has instilled in her spirit—she really lets His love in!  And she knows how to be strong by being dependent on Him.  Here's something really neat she said to me:

"When a machine is broken, you take it to the person who made it—he knows how to fix it better than anyone else, because he made it and he knows how it works.  It's like that with God too—He made us and He knows us, so when we are having problems, we should take them to Him so He can fix them.  So many people try to fix themselves, and it just doesn't work unless you go to God."

That is such a beautiful way to explain why it is best to trust God rather than people.  Trying to be totally self-sufficient is actually inefficient, and the result is not as good as if we let God handle things.

I am so grateful to for super inspiring friends who can teach me so much about trusting in God and sharing His love.  Hooray for faith buddies!

Thymey-Wimey Chicken Stuff with Rice

Did you know I could write recipes?  I can write recipes!

I'm not a Thyme-Lady by any means.  What I am, really, is bad at using my parents' thyme dispenser.  This recipe was originally going to be cilantro/basil based, but the first time I made it, when I tried to add a pinch of thyme, the thyme shaker exploded.  So I re-adjusted the spice palate and carried on—and all without a sonic screwdriver, I might add!  It was such a success that I decided to write it down.  It's one of my favorite recipes now!

This is served best with rice, but I imagine it might go well on pasta also.  (Remember that to make magical rice, you cook the raw rice in oil first for a few minutes, then add boiling water.)

Ingredients:

5 small chicken breasts (or the equivalent in thighs, maybe 8 thighs)

2 or 3 small sweet peppers

about 1 onion

2 or 3 chopped chives

4 or 5 tomatillos (can be replaced by 1/4 of an eggplant)

2 tomatoes

1/2 cup olive oil (can be replaced with any oil)

1 cup water

1 small handful of salt (to taste)

1 small handful of sugar (to taste)

1 tsp basil

1 tsp cilantro

1 tbsp garlic

generous amounts of thyme!

(Note that all spice measurements are estimates; I usually just shake it in until it smells right.)
(Also note that the most important spices here are thyme, garlic, sugar, and salt.  You can omit the basil and cilantro if you don't have them handy.)

Dice the chicken and vegetables.

Put all of the ingredients in a pot.  Add water and/or oil until all of the ingredients (specifically the chicken) are mostly submerged.  Mix well.

Boil it all for about a half hour to an hour (or slow-cook in a crocpot) until the vegetables are all really soft.  Stir occasionally.  Add more salt and sugar to taste.

I like this dish to be a little thicker than minestrone soup.  If yours is too watery, boil it uncovered until it reaches the desired consistency.

Serve on top of rice.  Serves 3 (depending on how much rice you made).

Let me know if these measurements work out for you guys.  Hope you enjoy!