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!
Wugs © Jean Berko Gleason 2006. Drawn with permission!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
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.
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):
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.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
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."
Sunday, November 10, 2013
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.
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!
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!
Thursday, November 7, 2013
"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.
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!
Monday, November 4, 2013
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!
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!
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