A few links 'n stuff

I'll be gone for a few days starting tomorrow, heading for Wisconsin to watch Elizabeth in the Madison Ballet's Nutcracker. So here they are.

On election day, John penned a prayer for our nation.
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Every now and then he gets off a couple of good ones: "I recently read of an author who complains of writer's block over the past seven years due to the policies of the Bush administration. I suppose he'll sue for lost wages." And:

...the way the world works is that the coin of the realm is relief of suffering: if someone does something that prevents me from suffering, even as minor as letting me in their lane of traffic, I am grateful. I feel the love. But if relief of suffering is the only thing I see as of value, then how can I truly celebrate Christ's love, He who relieves our sins and not our sufferings? Until I truly see sin, and not suffering, as the supreme evil, can I be truly grateful to Christ?

And, oh, he's also a Catholic blogger in Babeland.

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But the best form of inquiry begins with taking reality as a given, that is, as a gift. And as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, one never receives a gift in a critical spirit. Such an intellectual life is perhaps not an exercise in critical thinking, but so much the worse for critical thinking. Docility in studies is far more compatible with thanksgiving, a word which some Christians will recognize in its Greek form: Eucharist. In this confluence, we see how religion does not oppose but assists intellectual inquiry. Rightly practiced, the worshiper’s docile openness to God can reveal self, man and the world to him.

Kevin Jones' "Critical thinking is making us stupid."
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A piece of useful geekery from Chris: "I'm tinkering with a facebook app...
UPDATE: it works! If anybody needs an app to post their blog psots to facebook, use Simplaris Blogcast."

I haven't written many psots lately, but I'll give the apps a try.
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Sparki's kids say the darndest things.
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Of bare pregnant bellies and bare nursing breasts, and what you ought to do with them - Christine figures me out at last, asserting in comments: "You perv."
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Lane Core shows us a map laying out the extent of political corruption in Illinois as opposed to the rest of the nation.
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"Of course, in Orlando the only way to tell the difference between Life Teen Mass and regular Mass is that the latter doesn't feature lectors wearing torn jeans and hoodies. And I've never had the person in front of me spit on and insert a contact lens during the consecration at the regular Mass.

So far, anyway. - Karen Hall
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Via Amy Welborn, via Catholic Key, we get to the Benedictines of Mary, who have a CD for sale, and I like the samples offered on that page. I think I'm going to shell out the dough. Mostly because I've always been a sucker for a group of smiling nuns. In habit. The only Benedictine I ever knew never wore one. As in never ever. She didn't smile much either.



















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Bob the Trousered poetic Ape would be the ruler of the "Pope's navee" - if they had one.
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From Mary of Broken Alabaster, a nifty Gaudete for the 3rd Sunday of Advent. It's actually better than nifty. You really must see it. You might also see TSO over there, who seems to be everywhere.
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They will find her near the seventh green,
The early morning golfers, awake now—
Her knees close enough to stand if she’d
Had a mind to—and I wonder if the last thought
Of the suicide is about being found—a consideration
Of backdrop and color, of a drained face framed
By pines at first light?

Darius Lucesne
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"But this is obviously wrong." - Lydia McGrew

"Oh my goodness, what an elegant mind this woman has. Slices and dices like a sushi artist and serves it up nice on the plate." - Commenter Margaret at Touchstone