Prebiotics? Baby I eat the real prebiotics. Quark-gluon plasma, neutrinos, stardust on special occasions.

mobile phone photo of an inside of a refrigerator showing a box of wine and a jar with some cabbage in it

When I visit my mom I enjoy looking in her refrigerator. Today, box wine and cabbage in a repurposed peanut butter jar. 83, widowed, and living her best life it seems to me.

I'm sorry

From Mom's weekly email report: "Now that I'm a widow, there's space for my being grumpy. [Husband] pretty much occupied the time available for grumpiness in our long relationship."

After living in Italy I'm endlessly fascinated and amused by the Italian usage of English words, e.g. la privacy, lo smog, shopping, leadership, babysitter, killer, and so on. Anyway, I was just watching an Instagram reel about la mindfulness.

We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new human beings who have learned a new song. ... Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. ~ St. Augustine (Office of Readings) #Easter

<<Cantate Domino canticum novum, laus eius in ecclesia sanctorum.>> (Ps. 149)

Homo novus novit canticum novum. ~ S. Augustinus (Officium lectionis) #TempusPaschale

Making my go-to breakfast of PB&J on pumpernickel with a song in my heart.

🎶 Peanut butter and Jel-ly
Live together in perfect harmony 🎶

Venerable Bede on the priesthood of the faithful (Office of Readings): "They are a royal priesthood b/c they are united to the body of Christ, the supreme king and true priest ... they must always remember to hope for an everlasting kingdom and to offer to God the sacrifice of a blameless life."

We're proud of our contribution to coffee culture.

Whatever they save the kid will have to pay back to a therapist as an adult

I actually enjoy meeting Lutherans because they are always at pains to explain how they aren't of the Missouri Synod as if that means anything to me. It makes me feel like Festus dealing with St. Paul: "they had certain points of dispute about their own religion..." (Acts 25:19)

After Mass a young lady asks me questions about marriage prep and keeps explaining that her boyfriend is Lutheran as if she's trying to make me understand that he was born on a different planet or something.

I didn't get RCIA and I'm not even sure why; I guess they hadn't heard of it at the parish near where I went to college. I just say I was born out of order like St. Paul. (1 Cor 15:8)

We hold our common assembly on Sunday because it is the first day of the week, the day on which God put darkness and chaos to flight and created the world, and because on that same day our savior Jesus Christ rose from the dead. ~ St Justin Martyr (Office of Readings)

Looks pretty much the same today, just fewer friars.

I asked when I lived there; no further friars will be added.

We're proud of our brothers who make up our bone chapels!

mobile phone photo of a version of the 'San Damiano cross' crucifix in bas-relief design on a paschal candle. The central of the five incense grain pins is pinned a little to the left because putting it right in the middle would have meant piercing poor Jesus in the belly.

The pastor was convinced to get a San Damiano cross paschal candle for this year of the 800th of St. Francis's passing. The one incense grain is off center because he didn't want to poke Jesus any more than he's been poked already.

Curse me to hell, but I will not allow Danny Boy as a recessional hymn.

thank you for deck blue

DM the name of the physician who wrote that prescription.

No, but he said it might hurt tomorrow.

First ever visit with an ear, nose & throat doctor. Nice NY Jewish boy. He said he found the cause of my nosebleeds and he cauterized it.

"So it's like a nose hemorrhoid?

"Ah...I don't care to think about it like that...but, yes, similar concept."

As someone who has lived adjacent to the Via Veneto, I can say, yes, it has the vibe.

The unsophisticated and unrealistic way in which Francis tried to make the Sermon on the Mount the rule of his 'new People' is not understood properly if we designate it as 'idealism'...it is understandable only as...eschatological confidence... (Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes, 40)

For Pope Benedict XVI's 99th birthday today, a favorite quote:

poor quality mobile phone photo of a tomb showing a statue of a recumbent figure in ragged clothing holding a crucifix in his left hand over his chest and a rosary in his right hand at his side. The inscription above reads, "Hic Jacet Corpus S.B.J. Labre"

Happy feast of St. Benedict Joseph Labre! His tomb at Santa Maria ai Monti in Rome was the first pilgrimage I made when I moved there.

St Gaudentius of Brescia on the Eucharist: "It was the Lord’s will that his gifts should remain with us, and that we who have been redeemed by his precious blood should constantly be sanctified according to the pattern of his own passion." (Office of Readings)

mobile phone photo of a sheet of paper on which has been drawn an incomprehensible diagram made up of dots interconnected by lines, several letters P, an X, and two arrows pointing left

Today is the 10th anniversary of my therapist giving me this diagram, so as you can plainly see I have made a lot of progress

Thank you! And to you. Christ is risen!