Ironic Lent - Forty Days of Lent, or Fifty Shades of Grey?

 Sacred Heart Church

I went to Confession of Saturday( St. Valentine's Day)  before the 4PM Mass at Sacred Heart Church.  It was a doozy - Father had to excuse himself twice during my recitation of sins of commission and omission.  When Father Bill's stomach had settled we continued.

That said, I am forgiven. Now, comes the hard part.

Stay clean.

It seemed that my sacrament was tailor made by the readings from Genesis, St. Paul and Mark's Gospel - banishment, lepers, and cleansing.  I have recently had surgery to remove a huge tumor on my snot-locker and remain bandaged - is this an out ward sign of my spiritual malaise? During the Gospel of Mark more than a few of my neighbors turned with accusing fingers and cried 'Leper, UnClean!'

Hey, it;s 'cuz of my See-Through Irish pelt!

However the earlier passage of Yaweh grilling Adam and Eve about what they'd been up to and their subsequent banishment was what it is all about.

The Genesis passage is the orginal Fifty Shades of Grey

But Yahweh God called to the man. 'Where are you?' he asked.
I heard the sound of you in the garden,' he replied. 'I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.' 'Who told you that you were naked?' he asked. 'Have you been eating from the tree I forbade you to eat?'The man replied, 'It was the woman you put with me; she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'*
Then Yahweh God said to the woman, 'Why did you do that?' The woman replied, 'The snake tempted me and I ate.'
Then Yahweh God said to the snake, 'Because you have done this, Accursed be you of all animals wild and tame! On your belly you will go and on dust you will feed as long as you live.

* N.B. - Guy blames the woman and woman blames the snake. Man, ain't that the way?


For this sin, God 86'd the Snake and booted Adam and Eve** from the Garden.

The snake is of course Old Nick, formerly known as Lucifer - The Prince of Darkness.-Satan.

Like God, we believe that Satan is myth. A fairy tale that breeders tell their bratty kids to keep them quiet.;

Nope.  He there.  I housed him for far too long. That is until Father Bill passed on the good word to me.

You see, a priest does not 'forgive' my sins - Christ ( Joshua Bar Jospeh) did that with His death on the cross and His Resurrection.  The priest is merely standing-in (skype-ing)  for Christ.  All of the forgiveness is already cashed in.

Satan does not want us to collect and to continue acting with him and ignoring God's love of us.

Father Bill gave a great homily on Lent and forgiveness. Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, Catholics receive a cross of ashes on our forheads from a priest who tells us , "Memento, homo ... quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris" (cf. Gn 3:19).trans. -"Remember, man, you are dust and to dust you will return."

I am dust held together by water, but I will be dust again.

In the early Church, Father Bill reminded us, there were three huge sins that required public confession before the whole community

• Murder
• Adultery
• Apostasy

All three would have been pretty obvious to the neighbors and for such sin a person would be shunned, until he has publicly asked forgiveness of his brothers and sisters and performed penance - wearing sack cloth and ashes.

Today, only murder gets some notice and if one has a great criminal defence lawyer - no sweat at all.

Apostasy is denying the faith.  Playing God.

Adultery is very confusing and difficult to describe these days without drawing boos from our studio audiences.  Fifty Shades of Grey types tell us that Adultery is liberating.

The first liberator was the snake in the Garden.

Me?   I know how weak I happen to be - I have forty days to work on it.

I kind of like being forgiven.

** Never fail appeal to a high court - Mother of God

Hail Holy Queen
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve:
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, most gracious Advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us,
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Amen.

Catenation! Cats + Caffeine + Comestibles = Japanese Cat Cafes

I live in a blue collar ethnic neighborhood, Morgan Park of Chicago.  This is place where folks live in bungalows, Georgians, raised ranches and two, or three flats . . . over by Western . . . Western Ave.  There are two sets of train tracks, alleys aplenty and the od prairie ( Archiac Chicagoese for an open lot between two buildings N.B. I had originally written  "a space between two buildings," , but that is more correctly termed a gangway.  Families with kids, lots and lots of kids live here.  Kids need pets and the largest fur-hided, four, or three legged, determined by the fleetness of the critter where CXN trains are concerned, demographic is the dog. The dog is a great pet and man's best friend. It also makes a tasty snack with peppers and coconut milk for future transcendant and post-racial Presidential timber.

Dogs are easy to train and fun to tease.  As a young buck I prided in my Irish Terrier Leroy who could sit for ten minutes with an Oreo perched on the bridge of his smeller, until given the Okay to snap it into his yap.  Leroy was the ugliest dog on the planet circa 1964 - 1977 - he had a red goatee  and a thumb sized tail.  He was also a bad-ass and won the acclaim of my contemporaries around 75th & Wood Street by kicking Bowzer ( a mixed bull terrier & Nowegian rat) Lanigan's ass. 

Dogs need affection and constant attention, because they are fundementally trusting, sloppy, needy and not real bright. Dogs of both genders are male in this way; hence Man's best Mirror.

Cats are feminine.  They are aloof, sexy, alluring, dismissive, neat and brilliant.  Cats are independent for the most part and require only clean torpedo sand, or $6 a gallon stink free stuff, water and Whiskas.

Hickey -I have a cat, now. 

Auditor/Reader -Pussy.

Hickey - This we know.  I bought my kids a cat four years ago, knowing full well that its care would fall into the hands of dear old Pa.  It did.  I am a quick read in some ways.  Sophie is a female-woman cat, with fur as black as a mother-in-law's heart.  Sophie is a strange agent.  She will stand with one fore-paw balancing her upright on a foot stool, while crossing her hind legs - exactly like Mr. Peanut.  Tru Dat.

She also joins me for morning prayers and leads me to the day's task immediately like a goodwife: " Scoop the Poop, Change the Water and spill the Whiskas! . . .Now! If not sooner! $hit, shower and shave on your own time!"

With those tasks completed, I read and not until.  I now read at the computer and Sophie perches on my right shoulder, following her ablutions and breakfast. Having read, I get to practice my prosing. Sophie is astride my clavical as I type.

I read this morning that in Japan, due to the tyranny of condo and apartment holders, cats are denied to people.  With Nippones business savvy, an enterprising gents have created a Cat-Cafes - Super Happy Hi Kitty Number Ibe Starbucky Plenty . 

Cat cafés are huge in Japan right now. As the name suggests, these are coffee shops where cat lovers go to sip overpriced lattes and hang out with an adorable smoosh pile of kitties. In the past five years, exactly 79 such cafés have popped up all over Japan. What’s weird is that the café cats aren’t expensive pedigreed felines like Persians or those other ones with the funny bendy ears, they’re just the everyday mixed breeds you might find in the back lot of your local supermarket, cats who, in the immortal words of Brian Setzer, “slink down the alley, looking for a fight/Howling to the moonlight on a hot summer night.” Likewise, in the past few years, there’s been an explosion of photo books and DVDs featuring average-joe cats. If people are so fascinated by what are essentially domesticated alley cats, why don’t they just swoop one up from the legions of strays all over Japan and take them home? I’ll tell you why: because landlords in Japan are dicks.

I would have written Diques just to gussy up the prose for the feinter of heart. . . . well, maybe.
I enjoyed this exchange between the author and customer.

                                        Are you a regular here?

Kayoko: I first visited three weeks ago, and since then I’ve been coming here every week. I’m completely hooked.

You sound like a devoted fan. How did you discover this place?

I ride the Yokohama Line train a lot, and one day I saw a glimpse of the café’s interior while I was passing through. If you tiptoe you can see people playing with the cats from the train. I checked out their blog and it looked like a nice café, so I invited a friend to come with me and we found that it was a really friendly place. Now I come alone, like a lot of customers here. Chatting with other people is part of the fun.

It looked like the cat you were playing with earlier was scolded by one of the staff. What did he do?

I saw him grab a stick of sugar from the table with his mouth and run, so I told one of the staff. I had heard they’re not allowed to do that. So he ended up getting scolded… Apparently that was his third time today. Other cats try to lick milk out of the pot that they bring with your coffee. Maybe that’s just their way of saying that they want to play with you.

I wondered if the Japanese scold in the same manner they revealed during the Greater Far-East Co-Prosperty Sphere.
 
 
Hickey -  Sophie, may I have word with you about the hair-ball suprise my toes and nose had this moring?