From gods to devils – the history of the cat, from Walt Disney’s point of view

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I chanced upon this awesome video of an animated segment shown in the 1950s on the old Disney weekly TV show. Known originally as “Disneyland,” the show went through many title changes (the one I remember watching was “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”). I just loved this video of their history of the cat and thought you’d enjoy it too!

Thanks to the Mary Sue blog for bringing this video to our attention.

Click to Tweet & Share: From gods to devils – the history of the cat, from Walt Disney’s point of view http://wp.me/p2D9hg-bL

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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
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Love your enemies? Even today?

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I am seriously looking for answers to a question.

First, a little background.

In the Catholic lectionary, today’s Gospel from Luke chapter 6 reads as follows:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“To you who hear I say, love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you.
To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
offer the other one as well,
and from the person who takes your cloak,
do not withhold even your tunic.
Give to everyone who asks of you,
and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you …”

When I heard the beginning of this reading I found myself saying,
“No, no, not today, not after all that has happened!”

from http://www.thenation.com

Of course I am referring to the horrendous murders of the Ambassador to Libya and three other diplomats, and the overpowering of our embassies in Egypt, Yemen and possibly beyond.

I remember learning from Father Robert Barron’s excellent video series, Catholicism that the meaning of this scripture was that our apparent passivity (meaning our radical goodness) would reflect the evil back onto our enemy like a mirror, causing the enemy to repent. And if that person did not repent, you, at least, remained innocent, earning your reward in heaven.

Applying this scripture on an individual basis is possible (especially with the help of God’s grace). I believe however that scripture has a universal application. Therefore, the question:

If we are to love our enemies, what is the proper response to the chaos in Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Middle East? How are we to respond to the heinous murder of our diplomats? May their souls rest in peace and may God console their families.

What would Jesus do?

ADDENDUM: While driving home from work I prayed the  Divine Mercy, a prayer honoring the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the salvation of the world. The prayer is short:

“Eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and for all the world. For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”

As I prayed this prayer, I looked at a picture of the crucifix on my dashboard and it began to dawn on me that Jesus lived His teaching:

He loved His enemies. He turned the other cheek.

He allowed Himself to be tortured and crucified, surrendering His earthly authority and submitting to the Divine Authority of His Heavenly  Father. As a result, a total humiliating defeat was transformed into a miraculous victory: He was risen from the dead.

Jesus employed radical love, as He taught in Luke 6 and the results were more powerful than could ever have been achieved from any human effort.

What does this mean?

In trying to apply this insight to the chaos happening overseas, I realized that first we must lay down our own earthly authority and submit to Divine authority. We do that through prayer.

Prayer for our enemies. Prayer for guidance. And the humility to say, “Lord, we have no idea what we are supposed to do. Lead and guide us.”

We all can have a part in this. We all can pray.

As a nation we need to petition our Heavenly Father. Perhaps we can begin with the prayer of Divine Mercy:

“Eternal Father, I offer you the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and for all the world. For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”

Here we can begin.

I would love to hear your insight. Surely this is a teaching that all Christians grapple with.

Click to Tweet & Share: Love your enemies? Even today? http://wp.me/p2D9hg-c8

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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion

True service is getting out of the way: wisdom from Prayers by the Lake

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On occasion while driving I will listen to the Ancient Faith Radio app on my iPhone. My husband, an Eastern Catholic and deacon in the Melkite Church introduced me to this treasure. Tuning in I can listen to glorious Byzantine chant sprinkled with prayers and sayings.

One set of prayers frequently used is known as Prayers by the Lake by St. Nikolai Velimirovitch, a modern day Orthodox saint.

Today’s prayer ended this way:

O my illustrious King and my God, to You alone I bow down and pray. Flood into me, as a raging stream into thirsty sand. Just flood me with Yourself, life-giving Water; then grass will easily grow in the sand and white lambs will graze in the grass.
(Prayers by the Lake, XIX)

Continue reading “True service is getting out of the way: wisdom from Prayers by the Lake” →

The secret lives of backyard birds

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I received this from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and if you’re a bird lover, you’ll want to subscribe to their newsletter. Cornell offers many wonderful videos about birds including live cams of nesting birds. I’ll feature their best one after we expose the secret lives of your favorite backyard birds! Continue reading “The secret lives of backyard birds” →

Close encounters of the Bird kind

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Kayaking is such a great way to sneak up on birds! Here’s a couple I was able to capture in a picture. The setting is Mill Pond in Westborough, MA. This place never disappoints!

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Click to Tweet & Share: Close encounters of the Bird kind http://wp.me/p2D9hg-ag

 

Bidding a fond adieu to summer in a local paradise

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You can see the upper cottage at the top, built into a knoll.

This was the best summer I’ve had in many a year and a lot of it was because I started walking during my lunch hour.

I work in Wellesley, MA in the center of town where there are a treasure trove of walking trails (which I’ll share with you in a future post).

The walking plus frequent kayak trips have reconnected me with nature in way I haven’t experienced since I was a child. When I can find the words to share how this connection has fed me, I will share it with you.

On to The Outermost House to prepare for winter.

I’ve started re-reading The Outermost House, a poetic classic of nature writing of one man’s year spent on the outer Cape. The author, Henry Beston, knows how to express connections with the natural world. I think once I immerse myself in his poetic words, I will find my own.

In the meantime, I’ll share with pictures.

On Labor Day, my husband Rich and I drove up to the northern Massachusetts town of Ashburnham where the family camp of my brother-in-law is located. The two cottages were built by relatives back around 1920 on 5 wooded acres overlooking Lake Winnekeg. The air was crisp and cool, the area bathed in sunlight and the sky a deep blue. Needless to say it was very hard to leave this paradise, but it was the appropriate way to bid summer a fond adieu.

Here’s my photographic memoir of the day.

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How was your summer? What memories can you share?

Click to Tweet & Share: Bidding a fond adieu to summer in a local paradise http://wp.me/p2D9hg-aL

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To Work is to Pray – guest post from The Holy Rover

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The Holy Rover is one of my favorite spiritual blogs; in part, it inspired this blog with regards to spiritual writings. Blogger Lori  Erickson presents spirituality in a way that makes me hunger for more. I will be featuring teases from some of her posts with links back to the full post, and I hope you will enjoy them as I do.

To Work is to Pray

The Trappist monks at New York’s Abbey of the Genesee bake bread to help support their community. (Abbey of the Genesee photo)

On a recent trip to upstate New York, my family and I visited the Abbey of the Genesee, a Trappist monastery overlooking the green, rolling countryside south of Rochester. In its gift store, loaves of bread made by the monks were prominently displayed. “Monks selling bread?” my son asked. “Why do they do that?”

One answer, of course, is that monks, like everybody else, need to make a living. Religious houses often operate businesses, from cheese making and dog training to raising chickens. In my home state of Iowa, Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey sells delicious caramel candies while New Melleray Abbey makes finely crafted wooden caskets.

These enterprises do much more than bring in income, however: they are also a way to craft souls …

Click here to read the entire post.

Click to Tweet & Share: To work is to pray … guest post from the Holy Rover http://wp.me/p2D9hg-a8

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Susan Bailey, Author, Speaker, Musician on Facebook and Twitter
Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion

 

Tweets of the Week (September 5, 2012)

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Here are some great links and tweets I found this past week:

From the Post Bulletin @PB_News

Moonlight kayaking – I want to do this! – Post Bulletin http://www.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1507175

From Patheos.com @Patheos

I am so blessed to have two outstanding spiritual friends – Spiritual Direction vs. Spiritual Friend http://shar.es/7V9RA

ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Will Braden holds Henri, the cat who stars in Braden’s videos

From the Seattle Times @seattletimes

Here’s the producer of the Henri 2 video, winner of the first internet Cat video award: Garfield High grad wins Internet Cat Video Film Festival http://tinyurl.com/9jjgycd

From the Kenilworth Weekly

Kayaking Katie backs move to end paralympics exclusion rule  – http://tinyurl.com/8nwkfym

From the NewsandSentinal.com

“It’s just a gas to build a beautiful boat that looks like a piece of furniture and then float away.” http://tinyurl.com/9cahrkq

Click to Tweet & Share: Tweets of the Week: moonlight kayaking; meet maker of Henri 2, Spiritual direction & more http://wp.me/p2D9hg-ap

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Making the right choice even when it seems impossible

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I again wish to feature the homily that Fr. Edwin Gomez gave last Sunday based upon these readings from scripture: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 5:21-32, John 6:60-69

There are just too many choices.

In our modern culture we have so many options that many times we can’t choose one over the other.

We can have 500 hundred channels of cable TV and still have nothing to watch on the television.

We treat life like sampling a Chinese pu pu platter: we want to be able to try everything.

College students many times have 2, 3 or 4 majors … different degrees so they can have a lot of job options.

Too many choices! And we want to have it all.

Today we have two examples in the scriptures of just the opposite.

The fact is that spiritually and honestly for the best things in our lives we do need to make choices that exclude other things.

Joshua in our first reading tells the people that they could choose to worship the God of their ancestors, the God that they were used to, or they could choose to worship the God of this new land, the God that will be unfamiliar to them. Joshua leads the people to choose to serve the Lord, the one God of Israel. They made their choice.

A choice between goods will always be a difficult choice
and it always excludes something else.

The same thing happens with Jesus in our Gospel, This is the 5th week in a row that we hear “I am the bread of life”.

Stop saying that!

What they said was, “This is too hard. This teaching is too hard; we cannot accept it!”

Jesus made it clear a choice had to be made: “Choose to believe that I am the Son of God that came down from heaven. And the way that you believe in me is that you will eat my body and drink my blood.”

This saying is too weird. This teaching is too hard.

The healing, the teachings were nice, the reaching out was nice and inspired them, but now he has gone too far.

What is sad about this scripture is that some of his disciples turned away and no longer follow him. They went back to their former lives.

Choices!

I wonder what in our day will make us choose like that. What could Jesus say to us that will make us say, “This is getting too hard, I do not know if I can do it!”

Some of us struggle with some of the teachings of the church.

I have and I do. There are a few things that I can think of that cause me to say, “This is hard, who can accept it?”

For some of us it is hard to accept that God is forgetful.

He forgives us and unlike humans, he forgets. God holds no bitterness, no resentments, and no anger against you.

It is hard to accept that God is blind and he is indeed blind.

He does not see the negative or the broken in us, only the positive and the possibility of healing and fullness of life.

It is hard to accept that God is stubborn and he is indeed stubborn

He will not give up on us, ever. There is nothing we can do to make him love us any more than he does. And there is nothing we can do to make him stop loving us. He will pursue our hearts, for decades if he has to, until he gets us to fall in love with him and let him in.

I think what the gospel is inviting us to say is what Peter says, what Peter representing all the apostles said to Jesus:

“Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of everlasting life.”

“We are convinced that you are the holy one of God.” Notice that Peter does not say, “Okay! I got it, I understand it all, and I am right on board with you.” I am sure Peter and the disciples were as freaked out as everyone else.

But Peter’s answers reflect faith and faith sometimes needs to step out.

There are things that we do not believe, things that we do not completely understand. Maybe there are things we do not agree with. We say, “This is a hard saying,” but where else will we go?

“You have the words of everlasting life.”

We had to make a choice by coming here. There are a lot of things that we could be doing but we made a choice to come here.

At some point in our life we are forced to make a choice between one thing and another.

The choices we make now will affect us later on. We will need to let go of things in order to get what is really important. To me the choice is to be present as much as I can in my life. To see the beauty in everything, to find God in everything, even in our struggles, shortcomings and sins, and to remain open and aware that nobody has all the answers.

For me it is about letting go of all my junk, letting go of my prejudice, my control, my securities and the false belief that I have to know it all and have all the answers.

So, maybe we do struggle, I know I struggle. Sometimes I do not get it. And yet to whom shall we go?

Click to Tweet & Share: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” What happens when the teachings of Jesus are too hard to accept? http://wp.me/p2D9hg-9L

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Read my other blog, Louisa May Alcott is My Passion

 

First-ever cat internet film festival crowns its winner: “Henri 2, Paw de Deux”

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The Golden Kitty goes to … “Henri 2, Paw de Deux!” Except perhaps for the first Simon’s Cat video, this one definitely deserves the prize. I’ve posted both with a place where you can vote: which is your favorite?

Here is “Henri 2, Paw de Deux:”

And here is “Simon’s Cat ‘Cat Man Do:'”

And now for your vote:

Click to Tweet & Share: “Henri 2” wins Cat Internet Film Fest but should “Simon’s Cat'” have won – what do you think? Watch & take our poll http://wp.me/p2D9hg-9E

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