Month: April 2015

The Laughter of Sarah

~ bourbongal ~ Leave a comment

God said: You shall conceive a son

Sarah said: Ha!

And then she waited. And waited. She started second guessing what God meant. “Oh, surely, He meant with my servant.” Rather than listening and waiting, she strayed from His intended path. God is so forgiving that He made it all right in the end. She laughed at Him, strayed, and still He gave her a son.

I get it. God whispers to me all the time. I think I need more than a whisper though. A swift slap upside the head might get my attention. He does that sometimes too.

I laugh at God all the time; usually it’s after one of those surprising slaps. I laugh and think, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m not the one in charge.” Sometimes I laugh at what he’s asking me to do. C’mon God, I seriously have a lot on my plate. 6 kids, full time job plus full time teaching the kids.

Yet He wants more. He wants all of me devoted to Him. Ok then, God. How about some rest? I’ll sit down and pray. It’ll be nice.

Nope. You can pray while you stand. You can pray while cook. You can pray while you work. You can pray in the middle of a temper tantrum. You’d better pray then! Pray while you are challenged and busy. You serve Me when you serve others. Get back to work!

Ok, but how about a little rest? Time for God to make a funny joke again. You want rest? How about maternity leave, for a few days. He’s funny alright.

Books to Read Before I Die

~ bourbongal ~ 1 Comment

It started as a small shelf of classics. But my purchasing outpaced the speed of my reading. As the shelves grew, I named them. Books to read before I die.

Sounds morbid. I agree. So’s a bucket list. I don’t have a list of things I’d like to do before I die; nor a list of places I’d like to go.  I have wisdom I’d like to acquire.

I’m worse than a bibliophile. I’m a biblio-perfectionist. I’m re-reading earlier books I’ve read, simply to understand them in the context of newfound wisdom of later books. It’s a curse. So is trying to categorize them, but I’ll try.

In no particular order:

 Fiction

  • Gulliver’s Travels
  • Tales of Two Cities
  • Count of Monte Cristo
  • John Carter of Mars
  • 8 Cousins
  • Rose in Bloom
  • Anna Karenina
  • 1984 – George Orwell
  • Animal Farm- George Orwell
  • Dawn – Elie Wiesel
  • Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
  • Grapes of Wrath
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Canterbury Tales – Chaucer
  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich
  • Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
  • Faust – Goethe
  • Out of the Silent Planet – C.S. Lewis
  • Perelandra – C.S. Lewis
  • That Hideous Strength – C.S. Lewis
  • Pierced by a Sword – Bud McFarlane

Poetry/Plays

  • Inferno
  • Purgatorio
  • Paradiso
  • Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
  • Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare
  • Our Town – Thornton Wilder
  • State of Fear – Michael Crichton
  • The Iliad/Odyssey – Homer
  • Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
  • Walt Whitman
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

 

Word

  • City of God – St. Augustine
  • Summa Theologica – St. Thomas Aquinas
  • The Sadness of Christ – Thomas More
  • Humanae Vitae – Pope Paul VI
  • The Rule of St. Benedict
  • The Splendor of Truth – Pope John Paul II
  • Light and Images – Adrienne von Speyr
  • Christian Liberty – Martin Luther
  • The Imitation of Christ – Thomas a Kempis
  • True Devotion to Mary – St. Louis de Montfort
  • I Believe in God – Paul Claudel
  • The Spirit of the Liturgy – Cardinal Ratzinger
  • The Faith of Our Fathers – James Cardinal Gibbons
  • The Rosary: Chain of Hope – Benedict Groeschel
  • The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis
  • Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
  • The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis
  • The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis
  • Filled with all the Fullness of God – Rev. Thomas McDermott
  • Where We Got the Bible – Henry Graham

Wisdom

  • How to Read a Book- Mortimer Adler
  • The Intellectual Life – Sertillanges
  • Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
  • The Republic – Cicero
  • The Servile State – Hilaire Belloc
  • Aristotle for Everybody – Mortimer Adler
  • The Morality of Everyday Life – Thomas Fleming
  • The Crisis of Civilization – Hilaire Belloc
  • The Art of Virtue – Benjamin Franklin
  • Plato’s Republic
  • Socrates Meets Sartre – Peter Kreeft
  • Philosophy 101 by Socrates – Peter Kreeft
  • The Philosophy of Tolkien – Peter Kreeft
  • A Refutation of Moral Relativism – Peter Kreeft
  • The Summa of the Summa – Peter Kreeft
  • Transformation of Christ – von Hildebrand

History

  • The Journals of Lewis and Clark
  • The Great Heresies – – Hilaire Belloc
  • The Crusades – – Hilaire Belloc
  • The Federalist Papers
  • Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

Biography/Autobiography

  • Confessions – St. Augustine
  • Story of a Soul – St. Therese
  • Thomas Jefferson: A Life – Willard Randall
  • Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography
  • Seven Storey Mountain – Thomas Merton
  • Story of a Soul – St. Therese of Lisieux

Motivation

  • SCORE for Life – Jim Fannin
  • The Way to Wealth – Benjamin Franklin
  • Woman Today – Josemaria Escriva
  • Living the Catechism – Christoph Schonborn
  • Full of Grace – Johnette Benkovich
  • A Mother’s Rule of Life – Holly Pierlot