NEWS FAST!!! An Experiment

Nine days - no news for me. What would happen? Would the world crumble to dust? Would I crumble to dust? More the latter than the former, thankfully.

My daily news schedule:
Catch the NPR Morning Edition headlines while exercising shortly after rising. 6 minutes? (Tells me how liberals perceive the world.)

Marketplace Morning Report while making the bed and getting dressed. 7 minutes? (Tells me how secular economists perceive the world.)

EWTN News Nightly from the previous night while preparing breakfast. 22 minutes? (Tells me how the US Catholic bishops perceive the world.)

Church Militant's Vortex, Headlines and the Download as they are released throughout the day. 30 minutes total? (Tells me how the experts monitoring the Catholic Church scandals perceive the world.)

Lately I have been enjoying Anglican Unscripted videos when available. (Tells me how conservative Anglicans perceive the scandals in their church and about the culture wars in Canada and the United Kingdom.)

Results: 
This really hurt. Don't try it at home (ha, ha.) Ouch. Really. My theory that the world as we know it would crumble if I wasn't paying attention was proven false. (Thankfully.) However, I realized how much of my daily routine revolves around taking in news from all these sources. What else are you going to make your bed to besides the daily stock market report? 

I found I had to substitute something in my routine for the hole this left. I listened to a lot of classical music. That was nice but not as nice. It did force me to listen to some really interesting educational stuff I don't make enough time for.

Also interesting, when I did stumble upon news during this fast and heard a few words or saw a few lines it felt really repulsive. Like, you guys are still talking about THAT?! It was like rolling in the mud after taking a shower. 

+++ Update+++

As of several weeks later, for the reason mentioned above, I still have not resumed listening to public radio. And I am still floundering around without a new routine.

PreachyPeacePants

PreachyPeacePants says: It is POSSIBLE that everyone with different political opinions than you is stupid, mean and just trying to tick you off . . . but it is not LIKELY.

PreachyPeacePants says: Make you a deal. I'll be a good sport about it when my political party loses and you do the same for me.

PreachyPeacePants says: If you saw your child make ridiculing and insulting jokes about another child's opinions you would be horrified. Set a good example this election year.

PreachyPeacePants says: The end of the world "predicted" by the Mayans was not related to the "wrong" political party getting elected. Deep breath everyone.

PreachyPeacePants says: Which is more helpful, praying for your elected leaders or publicly insulting and ridiculing them?

PreachyPeacePants says: God is bigger than the 2012 elections. Trust and pray.

PreachyPeacePants says: Judge not [politicians] lest ye be judged.

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If you hear something said three times you will believe that it is "public opinion".

I heard that recently. Can't remember where. As I recall, it was not the most authoritative of sources so it is likely bunk. Then there was the question of whether you could hear something three times from the same person and it have the same effect. Regardless, it made me think.

This week I am doing an experiment. Every day for seven days (or until I feel like stopping) I am going to post a status to my facebook that encourages a kinder, gentler attitude towards people with different political opinions. As a means of self protection, all my status posts will begin "PreachyPeacePants says . . . " If people hear this message three times will they consider the idea "public opinion" and change their own behavior?

Really, the idea expressed is a no-brainer. This is Catechism 101 in just about any religion. We all were taught that calling people names and making fun of them hurts feelings and relegates one to playground troublemaker status. Why is politics an exception? I know so many otherwise really holy-living people who in matters of politics have daggers for tongues.

I am not saying, whatever you believe, that the other party might not be WRONG, like, really WRONG. But "public opinion" is that we should treat each other with kindness, and gentleness . . . the way we would like to be treated.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13: 4 - 7

The Opposite of Yelling

Last night my hubby was out of town and the kids were not cutting me any behavioral slack, if you know what I mean. It didn't take long for the situation to deteriorate into a great big yellin' fiesta! By the time they were actually installed in their beds I was squelching down a big blob of fury in my heart. I guess God got tired of hearing my groans of frustration because an interesting idea came to mind.

I resolved to speak to my children today only in whispers. (This is a variation of the more annoying and usually short-lived parenting tool called “speaking to your children only like Barney the Dinosaur”.)

I’ll bet Barney would appreciate the Catholic church’s opposites game. In it there are seven opposites or "contrary virtues" to balance the seven deadly sins. The chart looks like this.

Sin/Virtue

Pride/Humility

Envy/Kindness

Gluttony/Temperance

Lust/Chastity

Anger, wrath/Patience

Greed/Generosity

Sloth/Diligence

So what it means is that if you recognize that you have a problem with greed, make yourself do something generous. If you have the sloth thing going on, clean a bathroom. I would extend this list now to say, if you yell too much, make yourself whisper all day.

Another interesting theological angle is that it makes good penance. Whispering is a self-inflicted punishment of sorts that fits the "crime".

On the lighter side, I am a stay-at-home mom with a totally unused psyc degree. Experiments like "what would happen if you only spoke to your children in a whisper all day" appeal to the same side of me that hoped for twins so that for breakfast every day I could feed one twin Cheerios and the other twin shredded wheat. (I wondered how this would affect their high school ACT scores. If anyone has already done the twins/Cheerios/shredded wheat experiment please let me know.)

When you want to say something in a whisper you have to get pretty close to someone and make sure you have their attention. During our regular homeschool reading time today whispering forced us to huddle together on the couch (toothbrushing was appreciated).

All in all it did give us a yelling-free day. On the negative side, when my daughter called home to ask to be picked up she interpreted my whispering as either (a) telling her that someone had died or (b) that "the house was full of Nazis." It did give her quite a fright.

I hadn't realized how much I talk to people through closed bathroom doors (very hard in a whisper). And the killer today was kids saying "MOM!" because I had to actually get up and go to them to see what they wanted instead of just yelling "WHAAAAAAT?"

Finally, it was hard switching from whispering to my kids to using a normal voice with the outside world on the phone and on errands. But you know with the kids being homeschooled and being HOME so much . . . anything different, anything interesting is welcome and distracting from the frustrations of the day.

I am definitely adding the opposite of yelling -- whispering, to my parental toolbox of desperation. And considering all we have learned today . . . Barney would be proud.

Not Buying It - A book(s) review

At this point in my life I find myself BOTH (1) miserably cleaning out a whole room of my house full of things I don't know where to put or what to do with, and (2) still making lists in my head of new things I need to buy.

I wonder how really poor people in other cultures spend their time since they aren't reasearching things to buy, buying things, maintaining things, storing things and getting rid of things. Sometimes this seems like a frightfully large chunk of my waking hours. Of course they are probably spending their time making long walks to get water and scrubbing what clothes they have on rocks and working long hours for sweatshop pay. I don't mean to be flip about this serious matter, I am just pondering it all.

On that subject, I recall a book I read a while ago called Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping in which the author, Judith Levine, gives up spending money on all but basic food and necessities (and that much-needed house remodeling project that she started before writing the book) for one calendar year.

Ms. Levine is not a Catholic author - minimally Jewish. And she is prone to now-outdated political tirades and language and subject matter generally offensive to my sensitive ears. Therefore, as the author of this Catholic blog, I cannot recommend that you actually read this book (unless that is your cup of tea). I will give you the highlights.

Interestingly, in her book Ms. Levine didn't seem to spend much time worrying about what constituted a want and what was actually a basic necessity. I would think that I would be agonizing over all that grey, borderline stuff every day. Maybe deep down we all really know the difference better than we think we do.

The two hardest things for her were (1) figuring out how to give a wedding gift to a special family member (she ended up passing on a special piece of family jewelry that was much appreciated) and (2) not being able to eat meals out when friends invited her.

If you actually don't have money and friends are going out for a social dinner they will probably either not invite you, go someplace cheap for you or buy your meal. What if they know you HAVE the money but don't want to spend it? You have to keep refusing invitations and it seems like cheating to tell them you are writing a book . . . Very interesting.

So with the time I have just saved you by summarizing Not Buying It, you should definitely check out another book in this new Minimally-Jewish-People-Doing-Weird-Experiments-For-A-Year (MJPDWEFAY) literary genre called The Year of Living Biblically, One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Since he is Jewish, when author A. J. Jacobs says "Bible" he means "Old Testament", whose commands may be easier to literally do than New Testament commands (for example growing a beard versus loving your neighbor). And he conducts his experiment in New York City where his visibly odd public behavior probably is less likely to get him beat up than, say, Wisconsin. To make it easier still, he settles for tackling the commandments individually instead of simultaneously. A good, gentle read nevertheless.

During his year, he talks to people from all sorts of fringe and mainstream religious groups. Sufis to snake handlers (no Roman Catholics). He approaches all this, as did Ms. Levine in her book, from a real desire to know and learn, which endears me to this MJPDWEFAY genre. There are also some really funny moments in his book which I will not ruin for you. How do you fulfill the command to stone adulterers or to not sit in any chair that was sat in by a woman in the "unclean" time of her monthly cycle (Leviticus 15:20)? Read and see.

I would like to apologize for this unusually long post. Having read it all the way to the end you definitely deserve to buy yourself a treat. You can spend the rest of the day thinking and researching what that treat should be.