Have you tasted Dunkin' Donuts Coffee? I think they actually put donuts in there. It's a little pricey (for all those jellies and jimmies, I imagine), but it's certainly worth drinking if you get a chance, or find a good deal. And the aroma! Woe is me, for I am a sinful man among sinful people.
My wife and I love a good hazelnut blend. Along with it, a peppermint creamer at this time of year makes life a that-much-more beautiful proposition.
Netflix is a terrific service - let me just get that out of the way first. I've used it for roughly three years now and have had only the rarest complaint. My complaint today has nothing to do with their service, but in the dilemma I face each week in rating movies. They ask you to rate the movies you return (and others you've seen) with 1 to 5 stars. 3 stars is "I liked it." 2 stars is "I didn't like it." 4 stars is "I really liked it." 1 and 5 stars get into the areas of hate and love, respectively, and are used with fear and trembling, as you can imagine. Anyway, here's the problem - I'm pretty laid back about movies. Most that I ever want to see enough to rent or that are recommended to me are so-so. Thus most of my movies get 3 stars. Unfortunately a 3-star rating says relatively little about how I feel about the movie. I could give it 3 enthusiastic stars, yet it isn't a film I'm ready to step out on a limb and say, "I really liked it." I could give it 3 stars meaning that it was comparatively stupid, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I didn't like it - that there was nothing enjoyable about it or that I have some aversion to it being ever made into a film. (Sometimes I don't rate the movies because I never watch them, just send them back because I don't have much interest in watching them at the moment. Though that's rare, or is the result of a particularly busy time of life. Sometimes I don't rate them because I've watched them and am not sure how to rate them - a good or fun story, but kinda smutty [those are usually those action films that Laura insists upon watching].)
I also have other people in my family, and I often rate the kids' movies based on how often I find them watching them. If I rent a kids' movie and it gets watched once, then I know someone screwed up big - either the filmmaker or the father who thought they'd be interested. Or the advertisers who thought they'd be interested. For instance, Donut Man has 4 stars. Now I think it's on the cheesy side of things, but my kids really enjoy it. Again and again.
All of that to say, If you like movies, subscribe to Netflix. Enjoy some excellent documentaries that you would have never watched otherwise. Spend less time watching TV by watching more TV. How cool is that? If you subscribe, we can even be friends, and you can compare our likes and dislikes and see just how far you have to go before either of us can take you seriously.
This week happens to be a week I'm looking forward to in my at-home queue. I'll be watching The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia! and Innocent Voices
My dad is 66 today. Love you, Dad. Have a good one.
And Route 66 has nothing to do with this post other than it was the first thing that popped into my head when thinking about his age. He's older than people being encouraged to find their kicks there, but younger than the road itself.
About Fr Cantalamessa, the preacher of the Pontifical Household, and his second reflection on Advent:
Finally, Father Cantalamessa considered Paul's declaration that "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
This "forgetting," the preacher proposed, is detachment from any good that one has done in the service of the Church, "repeating to oneself, according to Christ's suggestions: 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.'"
In this regard, he concluded with a Christmas reflection: "This emptying of one's hands and pockets of every pretension, in a spirit of poverty and humility, is the best way to prepare for Christmas.
"We are reminded of it by a delightful Christmas legend that I would like to mention again. It narrates that among the shepherds who ran on Christmas night to adore the Child, there was one who was so poor that he had nothing to offer and was very ashamed. Reaching the grotto, all competed to offer their gifts. Mary did not know what to do to receive them all, having to hold the Child in her arms.
"Then, seeing the shepherd with his hands free, she entrusted Jesus to him. To have empty hands was his fortune and, on another plane, will also be ours."
HT: ZENIT
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.
He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Roses blooming in mid-November. Winter skies blue, lovely blue throughout. Sunshine. These are the days - fall days, winter days, spring days - that make me love this place. It's the heat of summer that I find difficult as a Michigan expatriate. Not that it never got as hot in Michigan, because it did and it does. But it's the quantity. Like how winter in Michigan seems to linger about two or three months too long, like an unwelcome guest who ignores your polite mention to your spouse about how tired you are, and fills up another plate with hors d'oeuvres. Michigan, where you grow up wondering why the groundhog's seeing his shadow isn't good news. That's what summer is like in North Carolina. I never thought I'd think such thoughts about summer, but there it is in black and white.
But that's not where I am. I'm in November. And for me, in the South, November is the second month of wonderful.
Wish you were here.
HT: The WØRD
And, and, and let me add, Stephen Colbert was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. You can hear that interview here. Or, rather, there. And on Sunday, the 23rd, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest of All will air at 10 p.m. on the Comedy Channel.
