Seven Quick Takes (vol 3)

I hope everyone's Lent is going well (and yes, I understand that that typically translates as wishing crosses on you all :D - but it means that I'm wishing many graces on you as well!). Mine is moving right along... Friday in the first week of Lent is already here, and with it volume 3 of my "Seven Quick Takes" - a weekly special over at Jennifer's fantastic Conversion Diary. (Be sure to stop by there and congratulate her on her baby girl, born on Monday of this week!)


~one~
Yesterday was a GLORIOUS day, matching 1956's record high of 84 degrees! It was more than mild - it was really warm; the kind of warmth that soaks into your bones. :) In the evening, I went out on our deck to relish the beautiful air. I only stayed a few minutes, because it was time for dinner. In that amount of time, I got a mosquito bite! We also found a fly in the house after leaving the door propped open for about 45 minutes...! :O Can't we have just one single day in early March without bugs?!? It was 11 degrees on Sunday and 15 on Monday... How did they survive?? :-/
(Speaking of yesterday, it also marked the 21st anniversary of my sister's Baptism and it would have been my granddad's 84th birthday. He passed away 14 years ago this month.)


~two~
Have you seen the real estate prices in Detroit recently??! Oh. My. GOSH. They're practically paying people to live there - evidently without much success! (For those of you who don't visit the hyperlinks, the median price on a home in Detroit right now is $7,500. Not $75,000. Seven thousand, five hundred dollars for the average house that's on the market.)


~three~
How about a flashback photo for Friday? (I have no idea what Friday has to do with looking at old pictures. I just liked the alliteration.) Yours truly in October of 2004. I was 18.


~four~
I love Garfield. :D

This one might be more appropriate if half the precipitation-frames were snow instead of rain! :)


~five~
My younger sister got her Minnesota driver's license today! That's been a rather drawn-out process due to missing paperwork, but the story is complete now. :) All my sibs live in Minnesota... I guess I missed the memo! (Sure don't miss having those winters though!)


~six~
Speaking of winters - or the lack thereof - our tulips are pushing through the ground. They stand about 3 inches high now! Our daffodils are a couple of inches high and our irises are starting to peek through as well. Considering we're supposed to be dipping back down into the 20's next week, it looks like we'll need to get out there and cover them. (How many teasers can we have before the real Spring arrives?? We've been blessed with a very mild winter, but I'm still more than ready for Spring! :))



~seven~
This week, I have picked up again one of my favorite books, The Song of the Rosary by Fr. Daniel Lord, S.J. If you have not read it, I HIGHLY recommend it. It's a 399-page poem, chock full of fantastic images and oh-so-human depictions of the events in the mysteries of the Rosary. It's excellent material for meditating on the Rosary. That being said, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite passages, taken from the end of the chapter on the Second Sorrowful Mystery, the Scourging at the Pillar. Remember - as with all poetry - to read according to the punctuation marks and not as much according to where the lines begin and end...
If Jesus at the end, flung to the floor
Partly by almost death,
Partly by soldiers' pity as they grant
Rest after torture,
Partly by cruelty that laid
Raw flesh upon cold stone...
If then He lifted agonizing eyes to see
Close to the cellar casement, through the bars,
Her [editor's note: His Mother's] watching face...
Or if in vision, as the saints have thought,
She stood close to the pillar
Where they beat Him down,
A writhing worm, no longer quite a man...
Was there for Him a solace in her woe?
Or was it doubled agony that she should share
However willingly
These scourging blows
Rained by lustful men
In penalty
For all the lustful deeds of those
Who loved the flesh too sadly and too well?

Who knows
Save only He who bore the blows
Of our offences
And the lovely she
Whose guiltless body knew, proxy perhaps,
The scourges that His guiltless body bore
For all the guilty bodies of the world
And all our guilty flesh.

Ah, if perhaps, his bloody business done,
One soldier dropped his scourge and cried,
"Forgive!"...
If but one callous guard,
Seeing the bits of flesh
Upon the whip within his grip
Or, catching a glimpse of Mary's tortured eyes
There at the casement,
Flung to the farthest wall
The ugly thing that beat his God...
If that had been...

Or if today somewhere
Lust knows itself as lust and cries the shame
Which pampered flesh
The while it tortured His and hers,
Mary is glad, and Jesus smiles
Up from the column where they whittled Him
To writhing pain.
Mary is glad, and Jesus with joy
Forgives.