Annunciating

Today, as you may or may not know, is the feast of the Annunciation. Normally it's on March 25, but because it's a solemnity (aka, an important feast day in the Church - and should be a Holy Day of Obligation but isn't anymore), and solemnities replace Sundays except Sundays during Lent, it is moved to Monday. Because I work at an awesome Catholic organization, we got today off from work. That meant I got to: sleep in (which didn't work out so well), go pray at Planned Parenthood, go to Mass at Planned Parenthood said by the awesome pastor of my church, and go on a lovely little hike with my roommates. It was really a great day.

I've gone to pray outside Planned Parenthood here now three times, I think. Never for very long, and it's always rather intimidating, but it's good for me to do. Today was the first time I've gone to Mass outside a Planned Parenthood. It was really awesome (in the sense of a lot of awe going on). It's powerful to celebrate the Eucharist in front of such a place of evil, and pray that our celebration of the Mass might help the poor souls who work there, who go there, and who are killed there. It was really...just...powerful. I'm not sure how to describe it. I'm very glad I was able to go, though - especially considering the feast day of today. It's a day celebrating God's becoming man in the womb of Mary - the beginning of his presence on earth, from that moment that Mary said yes. That is when Jesus' life began, and that is when all our lives begin. We need to pray so hard that the rest of the country will start to realize what we've been allowing, legally, for the last 40 years. It needs to stop. And it's going to take our prayers to stop it. God has the power, and he can change the heart of the entire country. He wants our help, though, to make that happen. But prayers are powerful things, and celebrating Mass outside of that building does so much good. I hope our prayers there today might have at least touched one heart to reconsider what they're doing there.

And man, seeing our great pastor (who is Polish and just so wonderful!), praying the Rosary with us before Mass, dressed in his beautiful Marian chasuble, was such a lovely image. Pray for our priests. They do a lot of work for this world, internally and externally, and they need our prayers. Especially in this time of great trial for the Church. Oh, pray for them.

On a lighter note...

The hike was fun. Just a short little hour-long thing, up in Evergreen, but it was so nice to get out. Yesterday I bought some form-fitting workout capris to wear under my workout skirts (which do have shorts underneath them, but they're still rather shorter than I prefer), so now I don't feel so...exposed. And they're comfy! And just wonderful. I wore them on our hike, and it was great. I was hoping the whole time to see some sort of wildlife - it is called Elk Park Open Space, after all, so where are all the elk? Well, as we were making our last turn of the loop, all of a sudden, hey, there's an elk! Oh, wait, there's like five elk! Oh, hey, there's another ten or fifteen lying down up the hill a bit! (Disclaimer: They were possibly deer, and not elk, but I'm actually surprisingly bad at distinguishing between the two sometimes. Either way, I'm happy to see them.) So I snapped some pictures, super excited, and we kept going on our way, and then I realized our path was about to turn and go right between the elk who were standing and those who were lying down. We cautiously continued, and I got to snap some more pictures a lot more close up, and just look at them - and make sure that they didn't start to charge me as they warily watched us pass - and it was just lovely. I love them. They all looked a bit shaggy, which I hope is because they're shedding their winter coats and not because of some sad disease or something. But I was so happy to see them. As usual. I go to be so close to them, though! They're big, too, in case you've never been near one close up.

So. That was lovely.

And to cap it off, yesterday we found out from our landlord that the flowers about to bloom in our front yard are daffodils. Daffodils! I love daffodils! This morning as my roommate and I headed to Planned Parenthood, the daffodils looked like they were so close to ready to come out. When we got back, they were even closer. And when we got back from hiking later this afternoon, several had actually opened! Not quite fully unfurled yet, or at least not at that point, but oh, it'll be so lovely to see them every day. Such happy little flowers they are.

Mary and Jesus deserve quite a bit of thanks for giving me such a lovely, prayerful, delightful day to enjoy so many of the things this world has to offer, and to pray to change some of the awful things that this world inflicts. God is so good. And he has such goodness to offer us, if we only open ourselves up to it. He's everywhere. Even in pain and sorrow. Oh gosh, I am so thankful for my faith, and for God's gift of himself to us, and his gift of mercy, and his gift of beauty. And even his gift of suffering, without which we wouldn't be able to appreciate the rest as much as we do. My heart is so full of gratitude right now. God became man for us - he entered to this world of sin and sorrow and pain so that he could take that all onto himself and in doing so, heal us and free us from it. In just over a week, we'll get to go through the pain and death that Jesus suffered for us. We'll remember all that he did for us - he who knew no sin, and yet took on all of our sin so that we'd be able to be joined with him, to be with him in heaven. Isn't that amazing to think about? Sometimes I'm just so blown away by what he did - and he did it all for me. He did it for us all collectively, but also for us all individually. He had me and my every sin in mind when he endured that pain. And he still endured it. God's mercy is just amazing.

Anyway, got a bit off topic there, but the point is, today was a great day. It's a day full of graces, obviously, since it's the day that Mary, full of grace, said yes to God. Said yes to becoming the mother of God. Said yes to becoming the mother of all, and the Queen of Heaven (though she obviously didn't know all that when she said yes). Interesting fact I learned in Biblical school last week - throughout the history of the kingdom of Israel, the Queen of Israel was not the King's wife, it was his mother. So it makes complete sense that Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is our King, is the Queen. It's so great getting to learn the history of things at the time of the Old Testament, and seeing how it all makes so much more sense knowing the context, and how things in the New Testament make more sense too with that context. Our faith is so cool!

Well, enough of my geeking out about things. But today was just a good day. (And I didn't even mention getting Sonic for lunch, which included tater tots and was thus fabulous.)

Is love a fancy or a feeling?

A few days ago, I posted a link to a site that's encouraging people to tell Starbucks they disagree with their decision back in January to state that supporting same-sex marriage is core to who Starbucks is and what they value as a company. I had heard about them officially supporting same-sex marriage back in January when it happened, and I haven't bought a single Starbucks-related thing since. And won't. Even though I love their seasonal drinks. I'd just rather not have my money support a company who directly supports something I am against. Anyway, so I posted that link, and got a somewhat surprising response - a guy I went to school with years ago and haven't really talked to since, who basically asked (respectfully, which I appreciated) how two people in love getting married could possibly be harmful to society. I answered as best and concisely as I could, considering it was just a facebook comment - it's hard in that medium to go in depth into a lot of the issues and problems inherent in two men or two women wanting to get married.

But something he said interested me - he was wondering how someone "who seems to care so much for others and is as intelligent" as I am could possibly be against any two people getting married. I didn't get into this in my response for him, because I didn't really pick up on that until afterward, but it's an interesting - and common, I think - view. Because obviously, if you're intelligent and care about others, you must be for anyone getting married. Intelligent people being against same-sex marriage just doesn't compute for a lot of people. (Well, a lot of people on the other side of the issue, obviously.) If anything, though, the more I've learned, the more convicted I am about the truth of marriage - and the truth of marriage has no room for same-sex couples. And why has "caring about people" become ubiquitous with meaning that people should be able to do whatever they want? Caring about people means that when they're doing something harmful, it's our obligation to tell them that they're harming themselves and others. We've become such a morally relativistic society, though, that it becomes bigoted or hateful or judgmental to say that any given activity is wrong. (Unless, of course, that activity is saying something like contraception or same-sex marriage or abortion or premarital sex, etc, is wrong. Then it's a-ok to say it's wrong.)

Anyway. Nothing groundbreaking to say here, I just thought it was interesting. I could get into a whole post about WHY same-sex marriage is harmful to society (point A: marriage involves, necessarily, one man and one woman, and nothing else, and without this unit together we face the breakdown of society - children NEED both a mother and a father, and sometime a lack of one or the other is unavoidable - eg, a death - but to voluntarily deny those children both is harmful. The male-female unity is good for society, as both has something the other cannot give, in multiple ways), but I don't have the energy right now. It's such a difficult subject for me to talk about, because it is so so misunderstood, and those who are against it are so very much made out to be the worst people to walk the planet. I mean, seriously, next time some well-known person makes a public statement declaring their belief that marriage is meant only for one man and one woman, and watch how people come out of the woodwork to insult and degrade that person. It's ridiculous. It's like that to an extent with other issues like abortion (does anyone remember the whole Susan G Koman controversy just a few short months ago? And they didn't even say they were against abortion!), but it just feels different when it comes to talking about homosexuality.

Point is, there is nothing inherently at odds with being intelligent and caring about others, and believing same-sex marriage to be harmful to society. Nothing at all. In my opinion, the more a person learns about the issue and cares about others, the more likely that person should be to support traditional marriage. Of course, that's obviously not usually the way it goes, because other things get in the way (biases, etc), but maybe someday the logic of the traditional side will be seen and understood by more people.

Marriage isn't just about love, people. That's a big problem with marriage in this culture today - including traditional marriage. People misunderstand what love is, and so their version of love that leads to marriage tends to dissipate rather quickly, leading to our high divorce rate. We need much better formation of the understanding of marriage - before people are engaged. It needs to begin when we're kids, not when we're about to walk down the aisle. People need more education. That's what it comes down to. We're too feeling-centric in this country, and it's really difficult to argue with feelings, or persuade people to change their feelings. It's going to be a long battle, but that doesn't mean it's unwinnable. We have Truth on our side, after all, and that counts for everything. God's already won.

Newsflash: I still love Colorado.

I have some random things to get out of my head today.

First off, as always: knitting.


My current project. It's going to be a blanket someday, but I'm really loving it so much. I started this pattern back in Nov 2010, but scrapped it shortly thereafter as being too much of a challenge at the time. Not anymore! Muahaha. But seriously, it's really enjoyable. Just enough challenge to keep it interesting, but not too much that I don't want to keep working on it. I'm a little bit in love, is what I'm saying. Which is both good and bad because I currently have something like four projects on the needles right now, and I'm about to start a fifth. All but one are not small projects, either. There's just not enough time for knitting!

I really just love knitting. (I know, you're blown away by that statement.) It feels so good to be good and proficient at something. I can do knitting. I can do it well. I've never stuck with a hobby this long, and I've never invested so much of myself in a hobby. I really don't like thinking of it as a hobby, either, because that just doesn't seem to say enough about it. It's funny, though; I don't really think of myself as a crafty person at all. Knitting is more cerebral than creative for me. It's more about rules and instructions than creating something. Obviously something is created by the end, but...it's just different, somehow, than "crafting." I don't know. Either way, though, I love it, and I'm glad I have it in my life.

Next topic: spiritual direction. I signed up to do this thing called an "armchair retreat" that a local place does every Lent, I guess. Or at least the last two Lents. It's an organization that focuses on spiritual direction, and training spiritual directors. The people who run it have ties to a church in Denver I really like. Anyway, this retreat involved six weeks of dedicating at least 30 minutes each day to prayer, and meeting with a spiritual director once a week. I think this coming week is the last meeting, which is sad. It's been really great! I've never been very good about setting aside time for prayer, but it's something I really wanted to work on this Lent - and I've also really been wanting to start going to a spiritual director - so this retreat was perfect. I'm not sure that I would say it's been anything earth-shattering, but it's amazing how much just thinking about where you are in your relationship with God, having specific things to pray with, and having someone to talk out what you feel during prayer can really help make some things make sense. I've had some interesting revelations that aren't necessarily things I didn't know before, but this helped put them in a different light, and it's helping me work on things I've really been needing to work on. It's just been a really good thing for me, and I hope I can continue seeing good fruits from it. I'm sure I will. And getting into the habit of praying every day has definitely been a good thing for me.

I've been really anxious lately to get my MTS diploma. It should be any day now, I hope, though it might still be a week or two...or more maybe. I just seem to remember people I knew who graduated in years ahead of me getting them around this time. It really doesn't make a difference for anything, but it'll be cool to see it, you know?


Yesterday, my office had a day of recollection, which we do once a month and usually just involves having adoration throughout the day in addition to our normal Mass, and the priest who does it also has times throughout the day for spiritual direction and confession. But every few months we have a retreat day at the Cabrini Shrine just down the highway from our building, and that's what we did yesterday. It was lovely. Lots of time for silent prayer and reflection, adoration, three talks given by the priest doing the retreat, and he was very adamant that he'd be available for confession during all the allotted times and even after Mass (which was at the end of the retreat in the afternoon) if anyone still needed to go. Not surprisingly, a lot of what he talked about was confession-related as well. Really, it was all about God's mercy, which is very much tied up with confession. It was all fabulous, though. (One thing he said that I liked was that we should think of it as days are to showers what months are to confession. Most people take showers every day, even though they don't strictly have to - it's just something most of us make time for. If not every day, usually at least every other day. Confession is something that we should do at least once a month if we can. Right away if there's a mortal sin to confess, but sin - even venial - just weakens our relationship with God, and can make us more vulnerable to the pulls and temptations of the devil that lead us into mortal sin. Frequent confession helps to combat that. So even though going once a month isn't strictly necessary, it definitely doesn't hurt! I've been going every other week during Lent, and it's amazing how much easier confession is when you go every two weeks. It's still hard, and I still try to talk myself out of it every time, but once I'm there it's a lot easier, and the graces from it are so good! So, anyway, frequent confession. Definitely think about it.

Other than the spiritual aspect of yesterday, I also had lots of great things to enjoy: first of all, Colorado is beautiful. I'm not sure if you're all aware of this or not, but man. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like a geek because I get so overly excited when I see the same mountain range that I see on my way to work every day, or when I see the buffalo, or when I see a beautiful sunset (not uncommon here!), or when I see that blue Colorado sky behind a tannish-green hill, with some white clouds thrown in for contrast. But you know what? I'm so thankful I don't take that stuff for granted. I'm so thankful I can find happiness in it every time, and thank God for it every time. I hope I never get to a point when it becomes blase. Anyway. So there was lots of time to be thankful for that yesterday. On our way up to the shrine, a few deer crossed the road in front of us, which make me super happy. I always look for deer in the hills on my way to work, and I was so excited to see them so close! On our way back down at the end of the day, on the side of one of the hills there was a HUGE herd of elk (I think it was elk) - seriously, at least fifty of them. That was pretty fantastic too. I spent some of the prayer times we had outside, enjoying the awesome lovely weather (upper 70s in Colorado is one of my favorite temperatures. That, or teens), and at one point I realized - there are daffodils! I saw daffodils, and I was so happy. I miss the flowers that are in abundance out there on the east coast, and that I don't really see out here (azaleas, how sad I am not to see you this year), and I don't think I've seen any daffodils out here yet, so that was pretty much the greatest thing. There were also some pretty crocuses (total happenstance that I know what they are, because someone on a blog I read mentioned the crocuses in one of the pictures from a recent post I read today) near the daffodils. I just love flowers.

So, aside from that, I also went to Goodwill with my roommate yesterday evening, and found several skirts I'm rather excited about, a few shirts to go with them, and two dresses! My skirt wardrobe has been bumming me out lately, because most of them I've had so long and worn so often, and there's just a lot of black and brown skirts. So, I colored it up a bit. Yay. And at Goodwill prices, you just can't beat it. That was pretty exciting. Especially the dresses. Especially one of the dresses. I just love it. I'm not sure if it might actually look like upholstery (pretty upholstery, of course), but it just fits so well and I just love it. That's all. Oh, and then on the way home from Goodwill, we were driving on a road slightly north of our neighborhood, which is a weird little area of town with somewhat farmy houses mixed in with more neighborhoody houses. But people up there have horses, and I've seen donkeys, and then yesterday, first I noticed this house had a horse, then I saw some cute dogs sitting on the porch, and then, almost as we were already passed it, I realized I was looking at three or four ALPACAS. I'm sure my roommate thinks I'm crazy with how excited I got over them, but man, I just can't help it. Although, it is a little odd how excited I get when I see large animals like that. Alpacas, elk, deer, buffalo, donkeys...sometimes seeing cows make me really happy too. I'm not sure what it is. But whatever, I love it. I've always wanted to live on a farm anyway.

And that was my good day yesterday. Of course, my rear passenger side window wouldn't roll back up after my roommate rolled it down on our drive home, so that was a bummer because I had to take it in this morning to get fixed, which cost money. But oh well. Maybe God decided I didn't need that $100, and didn't want me spending it on something I don't need. And then maybe he decided that finding ants in our kitchen this morning was the only surefire way to get me to go buy a mop so I could properly wash our floor (without resorting to the hands-and-knees Cinderella method, which I probably just wouldn't have done). And he also knew that it would put me into cleaning mode which would cause me to do vacuuming I've been neglecting. He didn't necessarily cause those things to happen, but I think he allowed them because it's for my own good. He knew I'd thank him later. :-) (That's a Monk reference for you sad people who have not discovered the joys of that wonderful show.)

Well, I think this has been more than enough rambling from me to last a week or more. Maybe the next one will be a more serious post talking about real things, and with fewer references to large herd animals. Though I might not be able to resist throwing in at least one...

Redesigning

I just spent probably way too much time making my blog look nicer. I realized a few days ago that I hadn't actually looked at it in probably over a year, and when I finally did tonight, it just needed a change. I'm excited I could make one of my pictures the big background picture! Fun times, fun times.

I'm really trying to get more serious about this writing thing. It's important to me, and I think it might be something God's trying to push me towards in one capacity or another. Besides, I like it. I've been journaling a lot more, especially with prayer, and it's been a lot better for me. I'm more organized on paper.

Anyway. My life is unique, because I'm unique, and I might have something of interest to share once in awhile. And even if I don't, it might be nice some day to go back and remember the fun things I did during this time in my life. Like this weekend, when I had an awesome time with one of my roommates - we went to Mass on Saturday, then met up with a few people to pray at Planned Parenthood, then went out to breakfast with them, and we did lots of yardwork at our house. It was so lovely out, and we spent a good chunk of the day in that loveliness. We even went down to Old Town Arvada to a little St Patrick's day fest they were having (which was approximately one block long, and included somewhere in the neighborhood of ten booths. But it was fun nonetheless. And we saw a girl carrying around a cat. On a leash. So...totally worth it, right?). And on Sunday I went and played ultimate frisbee, which I will be doing every Sunday. (Weird, I know.) Thankfully, my team has some awesome people on it, and they're not all uber-competitive about winning, and it's just fun. I'm terrible, but it's fun. (By the way, playing ultimate frisbee when there are some super strong wind gusts going on is...interesting, to say the least. It's almost pointless to run in the direction that someone is throwing the frisbee because chances are, it'll end up on the opposite side of the field. Or across the street. Or it might just hover there for awhile while multiple sets of hands reach up trying to grab it.)

Speaking of my roommates (several sentences ago...), have I mentioned how awesome they are? Probably not. But they are. One's getting married in September, but the other three of us are planning on staying together when our lease is up. It's so nice, having roommates like I do. Not that I've had bad roommates previously, of course. I'm just thankful it all worked out so well again this time, since it was kind of just a random conglomeration of "Hey, the three of us work together and thus sort of know each other and we're all looking to move closer to work, and then there's a fourth girl that two of you don't know but let's all live together!" So, that's nice. Tonight I played a few rounds of Speed with one of my roommates. Lots of fun. And then we finally rearranged the furniture in our TV room (which had been sort of sparse until this weekend, when we got a couch that had been sitting in someone's basement or something). The room looks so...room-like now! We're pretty excited about it. We now have enough sitting spaces for all of us to sit on not the floor! (Previously we had a chair, a small-ish futon, and...an end table. And now we have the chair, the futon, and a three-cushion couch! And we put a coffee table in there too that had been just chilling against the wall.) We're pretty awesome, what can I say.

This weekend coming up is a three-day weekend (yay for working for a Catholic org that gives us the Annunciation off! It really should be a holy day of obligation anyway. I mean, it's when Jesus actually became man. Life beings at conception, after all). I'm hoping to go to Estes Park, or at least hiking somewhere. (I really really want to go to RMNP, but a) not alone, and I'm not sure if I'd have someone up for going on Saturday, and b) gas is expensive, have you noticed? But I just really need to go be in nature and away from civilization. Not entirely, but somewhat. Maybe I'll see if there's somewhere good to hike that's a bit closer.) I'm mostly hoping just to sleep in on Saturday, because I haven't slept in for awhile. And the next weekend my parents might come visit me and bring my sweet Nutmeg up here! Maybe she can meet my roommates. And then we'll take her up to the dog park I found a few weeks ago up in the mountains that looks fabulous. And maybe to bark at the buffalo, but they haven't been around for awhile. Not near the interstate, anyway. (Plus, I would be slightly nervous to see how she reacts to buffalo...and how they react to her...they are rather big, after all.)

I got invited to a coworker's wedding in April, which is exciting. Going dateless is not so much, but I've never gone not-dateless, so oh well! Maybe there will be - gasp! - single Catholic men there. They must exist somewhere...but it'll just be fun to go to a wedding where I don't have to do any traveling! And it's at the church I go to here, and my favorite priest here is doing the ceremony, so, that's great. Oh, and of course Easter is in April! I love the Triduum. And I get Thursday, Friday, and Monday off, so that'll be a nice long break to spend at home. The Cathedral in the Springs is having their Good Friday service at 3pm, which is my favorite time for it ever since Notre Dame. I'll be spending all of the Triduum there, I think. (And when I say I think, I mean for sure.) I'm also going to cash in on a graduation gift that I still haven't used, but since I'll be home for several days, I'll be able to make time for it. ("Make time", like it's a difficult thing I'll be doing. It's a massage. Why I haven't used it yet is beyond me.) Woot.

Speaking of graduation, I'm starting to get all itchy to get my diploma! I think sometime around now is when they typically start coming each year. It's not like having the diploma changes anything, but it'll be so great to see it! I hope it's here soooon.

Guess what else? I'm also knitting things. Currently working on a blanket with a pattern I've been wanting to do for over a year, and I lurrrve it. So that's fun. Too much to knit, not enough time!

Alas, now it is time for sleep.

I'm (gonna be) on a horse.

One of the Denver groupons today was one of the best things I've seen on there. $69 for horseback riding in Estes Park for two. Um, oh yes. I've discussed with one of my roommates how much fun it would be to do that (and she totally agrees), so I told her about this groupon today, and. It's happening. It expires in October, so we have a few months to figure out when to go. But oh man. I've been wanting to do this for YEARS. I figured it'd be a lot more expensive than that! I mean, maybe if it were actually going into RMNP or something it would be, and maybe this place is terrible (but it includes continental breakfast, too!), but who cares! We're going to go horseback riding in Estes Park, and I'm super excited. And that's all there is to it. I mean, if I'm going to marry a rancher some day, I'd better know how to ride a horse, right? (I hope that's part of the groupon, teaching newbies like me how to ride...) So. Yeah. (Also, hello, beautiful views! On a horse! So excited!)

Also? I can't wait for hiking season to be back. My roommate (same as above) is excited to start going hiking with me, and I'm excited to have a hiking buddy again (since my most frequent hiking buddy left me for KOREA, the nerve). And excited to be close to new hiking spots. I love my Divide hikes, but I've done them a time or two. (Except one I didn't get to last summer that I've been wanting to do.) I'm closer to RMNP here, and am planning to get a year-pass next time I go so that I can go up for a day hike here and there. And there are other fourteeners that are closer here than they were from the Springs. It'd be nice to have more than Pikes Peak under my belt, though I've done that three times (and each time was quite different...).

Colorado is just so fabulous. My heart is so so happy here.

Overachiever

I just read an article that mentioned that the average age of marriage in the US is now the highest it's ever been. For women, it's 26.5. My half-birthday was yesterday, meaning that...I am officially older than the average marrying age for an American woman.

But hey, I've always been above average.

Rediscovery!

I haven't been knitting as much lately as I should (considering the list of projects I want to get done sooner than later, and none of them quickies like hats or scarves). I've been reading more, though, and writing, and praying, all of which are good things.

Tonight I updated some pictures (because facebook needs 90 more pictures I took of buffalo, sunsets, and snowy, frosted trees, right?), and I finally did something I've been wanting to do for years now (or, I started to do it, anyway) - I have a lot of CDs in my windows media player that never made it over to itunes, because when I had originally imported them from their actual CDs, they were put into a format that is protected and can't be transferred to itunes. Boo. (Or, as was more pressing until more recently, Zune, despite the fact that Zune is a Microsoft product like Windows Media. Dumb.) So I started by recopying some of my CDs onto blank disks, since I lost the original disks of a lot of my CDs in the mail during my freshman year of college, and then reimporting them back onto my computer in an mp3 format that would be recognized by all. It's all pretty silly that I have to do that, but I haven't found a way around it. I must have grown weary of that after awhile, though, because I still had a bunch that hadn't made it. So tonight I went through my windows media library and compared it with my itunes to see which ones were in WM that weren't in itunes, and I put those all in a list. And I'll just start copying from that list and then putting them back onto my computer in itunes. I'm excited, though - there are some CDs I had sort of forgotten about that I really love, like James Taylor, and the Shrek soundtrack, and the Now and Then soundtrack, and Little Women! And O Brother Where Art Thou! And some of my random CDs that are a rather odd and eclectic mix of music that probably shouldn't go together, and some songs that most people probably think no one should listen to (but which will always have a special place in my heart because they were popular songs when I first started getting into popular music). One of my random CDs has the X-Men cartoon theme song, from when I was a kid, along with three songs from the Muppet Movie, some Barenaked Ladies, some Glenn Miller, Marvin Gaye, Vertical Horizon, and Dueling Banjos from Deliverance. Maybe it's not as weird as it seems to me. But weird or not, I still like it. Anyway. I'm excited to get them transferred over and onto my ipod. And I just bought a transmitter doohickey so I can listen to my ipod in the car! It's super exciting! And it has a remote! The car I drove as "mine" in high school and early college (when I was home) had a remote for the radio. It was so nice. I don't know why. I just really liked having a remote for the radio.

So, that's what I did tonight instead of knit, and I'm pretty ok with that. It's like buying a bunch of new music, but I already bought it years ago! And now I get to re-enjoy it all over again!

But I've really got to get serious about knitting again. Did you know it's already halfway through March? The year is almost a quarter over already. There's so much to DO! The good news is that I got a nice chunk of money put into my bank account today courtesy of my tax return, and while I've already put a lot of it towards paying off a credit card, I had really hoped that I would get it by my half birthday so I could order these knitting needles I've been wanting some more of (can never have too many!), but which are handmade - in America! - and such and currently take approximately six months once the order is placed. Popular product + good quality + small staff = long wait. Therefore, order on my half birthday, get them sometime around my actual birthday! Woot!

Getting off the internet now would probably be helpful.

Need not apply

Did you know that last week was International Women's Day? Don't worry if you didn't; the only reason I knew it even existed was because I happened to see a particular bunch of flowers at the supermarket labeled for International Women's Day. What made those flowers represent the day, I'm not sure. But there it was. And when I saw the name, I was immediately hesitant about it, getting a very liberal/feminist vibe from it, because "women's issues" has become a rather controversial topic lately, as you may or may not know. And those who claim to be on the side of women typically aren't the people I'd be agreeing with. The goal of this particular day is, of course, equality for women worldwide. Which is obviously a good thing, and very needed in many different parts of the country. But at the same time, goals that include equality for women almost always necessarily imply in some sense an easier access to contraception and abortion - as if throwing contraception at women in third world countries will help them stop being oppressed. "You can't oppress me! I have birth control!" And then there's the fact that for some reason women seem to think that we can't be equal to men unless we're the same - doing the same things, being the same people. That's just not how it works. Women and men are not the same (and we're not interchangeable, either).

And sure enough, several different mentions of it that I saw on the day pointed out that there's a "war on women's health" going on right now, and that this day helps empower women against those who would take away their rights to kill their children. (Of course, they don't say it like that, because calling abortion what it is makes it sound bad.) A blog post I read by someone on the other side recounted an experience she had attending an International Women's Day parade in Canada years ago, to which she had brought a sign that said something about how being pro-life is being pro-women. And she was forcibly removed from the sideline of the parade because of it. I just read an article recapping a Women in the World summit held on March 8 (International Women's Day), where - of course - the subject of "reproductive rights" came up, and women were encouraged to tell men to shut up about the issue. Because, obviously, if you're a woman, you're pro-contraception and pro-abortion. Of course, this particular article is rather obviously biased - calling women fighting for reproductive rights in this country an "oppressed group". Nancy Pelosi was a speaker at the event, and obviously also brought up the contraception issue. And, predictably, while Rush Limbaugh was "excoriated" for his comments regarding that Georgetown law student, no one said a thing about Bill Maher who, right around the same time as the Limbaugh episode, called Sarah Palin something generally agreed to be far worse than what Limbaugh said. Nary a peep from the media about that one.

And there's the issue. It's women's rights - if you're the right kind of woman. It's women's health - as long as you mean abortion. The hypocrisy is staggering. I know I just linked to a Fox news article there, which may not be unbiased, but you try finding news about that elsewhere. (Update: I just found one on yahoo. Better late than never, I suppose.) Obama chose abortion over women's health. That's what he made his golden calf. It's not about women's health. It's not about equality for women. It's about sex, really. It's about not having to pay consequences, or worry about responsibility. It's about sin, and our desire to pretend it doesn't exist. It's about our government, prodding the Church and then calling the Church a bully when she rightly defends herself, acting as though the Church was the instigator and the government is just stepping in to protect women from those big bad Catholics. It's about refusing to believe that there is meaning behind sex, behind gender, behind being a human being. All this talk isn't about women's health or women's rights at all. It's about denying basic objective truths that the world is trying to turn into lies. That's the thing about objective truth, though - we don't get to change it.

All these events celebrating women, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be welcome there. I'm every bit as much a woman as any other woman out there, yet because I happen to know that abortion and contraception do not free us - and, in fact, actually end up enslaving us, allowing us to be used - my voice doesn't count in these kinds of events. I might as well not even exist. Apparently my view of womanhood is offensive and harmful, or so it would seem from the way these kinds of women talk. I want to keep women down, keep them barefoot and pregnant. (Actually, that doesn't sound so bad to me. In context, of course.)

I am a 26 year old Catholic. What I believe and what I know to be true does not depend on whether I am male or female, because it comes from God. How I incorporate it into my life, and how I understand it for myself might change based on my being a woman and not a man, but my view on these issues is no more valid than any given man just because I am a woman. They might affect me differently than if I were a man, but since when do we make decisions on things in our country based on whether we personally experience them? But yes, I am a woman. I tend to be conservative - but mostly I'm just Catholic. I am proof that abstinence is a viable option. I am proof that it's possible to be a woman and to know that abortion hurts women. And men too. To know that contraception hurts women - and men. I know that all women deserve respect - not just women who go in front of the country and ask the country to pay for their contraception, not just women who will tout the party line (either party, actually). I am here to tell you that it's not just "old, celibate, white men" who believe the Church shouldn't pay for contraception - and neither should the government. It's not just those men who believe that women should not have the right to kill their own children, regardless of how old that child is. It's not just men who believe that women should take the pill and put it between their knees. Well, ok, maybe I don't really think that literally, but it's a pretty amusing concept and is certainly a lot safer and a lot less harmful than actually putting that pill into our bodies. Can't these "feminist" women see how contraception plays into men's hands? Contraception allows women to become easily used and thrown away. Abortion provides an extra layer of protection from responsibility for those men who just don't want to deal with those kinds of inconveniences. Those celibate old men are part of a Church that has always, always celebrated the genius of women. Perhaps not always to the extent that it does now, but where else have women been able to find such protection, such love? One of the highest figures of the Church has always been a woman - that model of purity, obedience, and absolute love and freedom. The Church is not about saying no, it's about saying yes.

These women (and men, too) don't seem to understand that believing contraception to be wrong, abortion to be wrong, extramarital sex to be wrong - it doesn't mean a lot of "no"s, a lot of things we're not allowed to do. It's about saying yes. Saying yes to the truth about sex. The truth about the human person, and about love. About what our bodies say and mean. About who we are and why we're here. These "reproductive health" controversies going on are all about saying no. They're saying no to the truth. No to love. No to marriage, and to the meaning of the human body. Women who want the ability to kill their own children are saying no to their womanhood, to their femininity. They're saying no to the father of their children, denying him his fatherhood. They're saying no to self-denial (which is a good thing - we could all stand a little less laxity in our lives, a little more sacrifice). It's ultimately a great big no to love, and to the God that created us all.

It's frustrating to live in a world where my yes doesn't count for anything - where the only voices that count are those who have fallen into the lie that is so easy to spread, the lie that says there is no truth, and that ultimate freedom means having the ability to do what you want without consequences. It's frustrating to live in a world where contraception has become synonymous with love - love in the warped sense of what our culture believes it to be. It's frustrating to live in a world where the ability to kill one's own child is the ultimate freedom from oppression, and without this ability, women will never truly be equal. I can't fathom how our world has gotten to a point where abortion has become THE issue for "women's health", above and beyond actually helping women be and stay healthy. It doesn't make any sense to me, and it never will.

So instead of being rejected from a movement that calls for women to be able to kill their children, I'll speak for myself as a woman. (And you should, too. We need to show the world that equality for women does not mean turning us into childless non-fertile machines. We need to show the world what it means to be authentically feminine, and authentically human.)

Beauty in everything

There's a lot going on these days I want to write about, and I will, but right now I'm too overwhelmed with this need to talk about something else. Something good. Something wonderful.

Today, I thought a lot about all in this world that God gives us simply because it's beautiful and it'll delight us. It was foggy most of the day up at work (ah, the beauty of working in the mountains - seriously!), and this resulted in the trees getting that delightful collection of white frost on their more norther-facing side. North-easter, sort of. Anyway. It's just wonderful, and I always love when I get to see that. There was a particularly lovely hoar frosty-day that happened over Christmas break 2010 where I got to take some great pictures at Palmer Park. I just love it. Anyway, it was making me think, God didn't have to create a world where beauty like that happens. He could have made it so that hoar frost just didn't occur like that. But he did. And what's the point? I'm sure there's some sciencey explanation for why it occurs and what happens when it does, but it's beautiful. Pretty much universally agreed-upon beautiful, I think. And God knew, when he created the earth like he did, that we'd find it beautiful. He did it for us.

And then I got to thinking about all those place in the world, places that no one ever sees, but which are breathtakingly complex and beautiful and amazing. Like...caves. I mean, those caves far under ground, caves where human eyes rarely (if ever) fall. The few times we do see it, we're blown away. It's this wonder-filled miracle. Or, heck, the mountains. Geysers. I was re-watching Ken Burns' National Parks documentary recently, and when they were talking about Yellowstone, reading accounts of the first people to go there (well, you know, other than the Indians, who knew how to appreciate this stuff better than most ever will), all of it is filled with this wonder that God created this amazing environment that just went on its merry way as it was, geysers going off with practiced regularity, snow falling and melting, flowers blooming, buffalo roaming. He made it beautiful and incredible and wonderful, even though for thousands upon thousands of years no one was there to see it and appreciate it. He could have made this world boring, and bereft of anything to wonder about. But he made it fabulous. He made it beautiful, with things we could never recreate and we will never full understand ourselves. And the planets. I mean, come on, the stars, and the different galaxies, and all of that. There's a whole other kind of beauty there. We've only just started seeing all there is out there, and wondering at it. God didn't have to make any of that, either. But he did.

Why? Why take the time to make such complex systems, such intricate designs, such magnificent works of natural art? Sunsets! He didn't have to make sunsets beautiful. But he did. This world, this universe matters to him. And he wants it to matter to us. He wanted to make something for us to know just how big he is. Just how much he loves us and wants us to take delight in our surroundings.

This past weekend when I was at the Living the Catholic Faith conference, one of the speakers was Br. Guy Consolmagno, a scientist who is at the Vatican Observatory. He talked about a lot of this (maybe partially why it's on my mind today), and one of the things he mentioned is that God made this universe, this world sacred when he entered into it in bodily form. This place isn't just a random happening of particles. God made it. He made it for us, and he made it for himself. He wanted to give us a place where we could look out at the mountain vistas, stare up at the sky on a dark night, enjoy the sunset on a summer evening, and wonder at who we are, why we are, and what it is that made all this happen. I just read an article last week about a newly-discovered branch of...chameleons, maybe? Some type of lizard. They're tiny. The picture showed one on someone's fingertip, and it barely spanned the whole width of the tip. Why did God bother to create that? Maybe because it makes us wonder why that would have been created. Who would have created it.

In an age that is so technological, so mechanized, God made us this world that allows us to remove ourselves from technology and find a new sense of how we fit into this whole thing called life. We can't wonder when we're glued to screens all the time, but when we're standing on top of a mountain? Oh boy, do we wonder. When we see a cloud that evokes a shape of something, or that just makes us stop and admire it because of its unique beauty, we wonder. When we get a glimpse of lands not on this earth, we wonder.

The real wonder is that we don't wonder more. The real wonder is that we can even wonder whether God is real, because how can he not be? How could all of this beauty have happened by chance? How could there not be a Being greater than us, who gave us all this beauty simply for beauty's sake?

Titles are the worst part of blogging.

Oh, hi there.

So, I know last time I wrote I said I was going to start writing more. And that was, oh, a week and a half ago? Well, the good news is, I have been writing more. Just not blogging. But it's been good for me, gathering my thoughts more, thinking things out through writing. And maybe blogging will follow.

Right now, I want to tell you something that highlights my extreme pack-rattiness. I can't remember the last time I bought socks. As a result, it's getting more and more difficult to find a hole-less pair of socks. And yet I don't throw them out. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to buy new socks, and throw out my holey socks. I went for a run tonight (a run! A real, live run! And I saw bunnies! And the weather was fabulous because it's going to be 30 degrees colder and snow tomorrow!), mostly because I left my gym bag in my room when I left for work this morning, thus making me unable to work out at the gym by work (unless I felt like doing it in boots and a dress). But when I got home from this run, I realized that my big toe was hurting, like I had a rock pushing on it inside my shoe. So I take off the shoe, to discover that my big toe has no sock covering. The particular sock I had on that foot had three! big! holes! on it, including the toe, which I had somehow neglected to notice when I put them on. As a result, I now have a rather large blister on my toe. Alas. Could be worse. And now I will officially be buying new socks. I may be cheap, but I guess I cross the line at blisters.

Speaking of extremes, this weekend I went to a very large conference with a very large amount of people, and it was stressful and near panic-inducing (well, maybe not quite), and by the time I was going to bed on Saturday, I had started to feel sick. And spent all day Sunday lying in bed with swollen glands. Coincidence? Probably, but I like to think of it as a confirmation of my introversion. Although I suppose that's not really a good thing...the good news is the conference was great (it was the Living Your Catholic Faith conference that ArchDen puts on every year, and it's great. Well, I've only been this one time, and I only went one of the two days (the first day was Friday, but I didn't think I'd be able to go Saturday so I didn't really look into it that closely). But thankfully my Saturday opened up Friday night, and I was able to go. It was really good! Good talks, standing-room-crowd-only for Justice Scalia, which also made me miss his son (a priest in the Arlington diocese, whom I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing speak on a few different occasions. He's a great speaker, and a wonderful person!). One of the talks I went to was about engaging the public as a Catholic, given by the executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference (whom I've heard speak before as well). She had a lot of good points, and during the Q & A there were some fist-pumping comments made with regard to the HHS mandate, and Obama. Jenny (the speaker) also mentioned a hearing that's going on next Monday at the state capitol, about a senate memorial for conscience protection. They want lots of people to be there. I really want to go. It's in the middle of the afternoon, but I'll be able to take the time off, so I think I might do it...super intimidated to go, though. I've never even been to the capitol! Well, maybe once, if I went as a homeschooler at some point. (Homeschool field trips were always so much better than public school ones. Of course, public school trips lost their credibility with me when I went on more than one to the waste water treatment plant. Hoo boy, talk about a good time!) Anyway though. I figure it's more than time I really get involved in this stuff in a more concrete and substantial way. That talk itself convinced me that it's important for us to be involved, and not just to sit back and let others handle it. Because you know what? That's what everyone's saying. It's just that, unfortunately, the other side happens to have the media on their side as well, so it's a lot easier for them to seem more involved. And maybe they are. But that's not going to change unless I change it. And YOU, too. It's up to us all.

Anyway. This HHS stuff has taken up a lot of my thinking lately, in case you didn't know. But it's kind of a big deal, so I'm ok with it. It's interesting - the Church's teaching on contraception is so much of why I became the Catholic I am today. It got me involved in my faith, it got me learning about my faith and digging deeper into it. Who knows why that is, but that's the way it is. And now, it's the Church's teaching on contraception that has caused such a huge reaction in the country. Well, really, it's because Obama decided to attack that very teaching. It's because of the Church's teaching on contraception that big things are happening. Because of it, the country might look verrrry different a year from now, if nothing changes. And the Church itself might look different - much smaller, but much stronger, too. One thing's for sure - the Catholic Church has been around longer than any empire, any government. She'll outlast this government, too. The Catholic Church isn't going anywhere.

Well. I am also continuing to enjoy seeing the buffalo most days before and/or after work. They're just so enjoyable. I don't know why. I could sit and watch them for hours. To think, how long I was working at FOCUS before I finally saw them. They're just delightful. Also delightful? I'm going to the philharmonic in the Springs this weekend with my mom. I cannot wait. Oh, how I love going. Especially when they play my favorite songs! (Like this weekend, with Gustav Holst's The Planets. Yesssss.)

On that note, it's late and time for bed.