Tuesday, March 08, 2011

CUTAWAYS: SHE

Matriarchal barbarian societies. Roving gangs of leper-like mutants. Mad scientists dressed in tutus. Insane monks dedicated to a psychic god of pain. Werewolves in tuxedos. A soundtrack by Motörhead. I tell you, nobody did post-apocalyptic like the 1980s, and not many did it weirder than the 1982 Sandahl Bergman epic She. Oh, don’t believe me? Well then, just take a look at this…

Life’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? You think you’ve hacked away successfully at one problem, only to find it’s actually multiplied instead. Which is my way of saying (as if you didn’t see this coming) that the real world has been interfering with blogging again, hence the small number of posts over the past few weeks. I’ll spare you the whining over the details, but the major problems included issues surrounding my son’s Aspergers and a short stay in the hospital for my wife (she’s fine, I wouldn’t be blogging at all otherwise). But things are hopefully calming down now (oh, sure), and maybe I can get back on track. Which is good, because as long time readers know, my posting here is directly related to my studying of scripture and Church teaching. So if the posting is slacking off, well…

In Father Roderick’s latest podcast over at SQPN, he makes a suggestion for Lent. Along with the “negative” penitential action of giving something up for the season, he suggests also committing to a “positive” action as well. But not just something wishy-washy like “I‘m going to pray more” or some other vague goal. In his opinion, that’s just a recipe for failure. Instead, Father Roderick believes you should be specific, as in “I’m going to pray for 15 minutes every morning when I wake up. Or at least after I make a quick trip to the potty.”

So I think I’m going to take the good father up on his suggestion.  I’m definitely still going to be giving something up for Lent, because as we noted Pope Benedict XVI saying, it is imperative we recapture a spirit of penance in the Church. But I’m also going to commit to a positive action. So starting Sunday, I’m going to see if I can crank out a minimum of three posts a week here over the course of Lent. It’s a specific goal and one that insures I keep my focus on God. Let’s see if I can do it.

Anybody else out there trying something similar to this positive/negative thing?

2 comments:

MissJean said...

Yes, I am doing the positive/negative thing. The negative: Three meals a day, abstaining from snacks, sweets, and alcohol. The positives: Pray twice a day, do one "extra" spiritual exercise a week, and write every day (a vocation I kept trying to ignore for a decade or so).

EegahInc said...

I forgot to mention my "negative", which is to drink nothing but water for forty days. Blech!