Caking

These are pictures of my recent cakes. The wedding cake picture is a little blurry. I didn't know the camera was on the wrong setting, and I was in a hurry. Oops.

Boxes of Soap

Quotes I have read before, but that are worth reading again and sharing many times, from G.K. Chesterton:

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty (speaking of those tasks traditionally assigned to women) as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
(emphasis and parentheses added)

That suffices to wash that box. For the second. . .

The current uproar over the Pope's recent comments regarding Mohammed makes me sick. And the fact that he is inching ever nearer to an outright apology disgusts me. "Please do pardon us for implying that there is an evil and violent face to Islam. Please forgive us for inciting you to blow up churches of those not even involved and murder other innocents." How is it that a group of people can commit acts of gross violence to protest they are insulted by being labeled violent and actually get a hearing from the rest of the world??? Is there no common sense left? I'd call it ironic if it didn't seem such a careless understatement to say so. No amount of soap will finish this, so I'll just stop. It's ridiculous and infuriating, and I wish Christians would step up and call Mohammed the false prophet he was. Below are quotes from other world Christian leaders.

In a first reaction from a top Christian leader, the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church criticized the pope. "Any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ," Coptic Pope Shenouda III was quoted as telling the pro-government newspaper Al- Ahram.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox Christians, issued a statement saying he was "deeply" saddened by the tensions sparked by the pope's comments.
"We have to show the determination and care not to hurt one another and avoid situations where we may hurt each others' beliefs," the Istanbul-based Patriarchate said.

In India, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, who is president of the Indian Catholic Bishops Conference, said the Christian community in that country must face Muslim protests over the pope's speech "with Christian courage and prayer because truth needs no other defense," according to AsiaNews, a Vatican-affiliated news agency.

taken from this article at breitbart.com

At least the Church in India has some backbone. But they, of course, are the ones on the front lines to begin with. They know that not standing up for Christ is the equivalent of not having Christ. We comfy, "civilized" countries could learn something.
But I was stopping. . .

A Happy Observation

I feel the need to point out that this is the first holiday in 2 years of which I have not spent at least a portion grading papers. Spending the day knitting, reading, and generally not laboring is much better. I look forward to Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and a succession of other REAL holidays in the future.

"The Sending Back"

One of the hymns we sang in church this morning--many of which make proper and laudable use of somewhat archaic words--brought to mind the word "remission." We rarely hear this word in common conversation today, unless we are speaking of someone no longer battling cancer, but in the KJV it is semi-frequently used concerncing sin. Christ died to give us remission of sin. I asked myself what, exactly, it is to "remit." Literally, the root mit or mis means "to send." Re, in this context, means "back." So, to remit is, literally, "to send back." Christ died in order that we could "send back" our sin. If I order some piece of merchandise and receive it in the mail only to find that I don't like it, I can (usually) send it back and get a refund. Ultimately, I am not charged for it. Unfortunately, we cannot "send back" our actions. Yet Christ has, in effect, enabled that very thing. When we realize we can't afford to pay for the mistakes--intentional or accidental--we make, we have only to acknowledge there is already the provision for "sending them back." We aren't charged for them--except for some temporal shipping and handling--and that is God's grace.

(Useful?) Musing

Whether these thoughts are worthy of thought, not to mention profound, of plain drivel may well be a debateable question. If you find them lacking in clarity or focus, you may chalk it up to wine, chocolate, or coffee, as you choose. . .I've had a bit of all three in the past few hours.
First, some quoting from Chesterton's Heretics:

Now, it is this great gap in modern ethics, the absence of vivid pictures of purity and spiritual triumph, which lies at the back of the real objection felt by so many sane men to the realistic literature of the nineteenth century. . . .What disgusted him, and very justly, was not the presence of a clear realism, but the absence of a clear idealism. . . .In [Mr. Bernard Shaw's] eyes this absence of an enduring and positive ideal, this absence of a permanent key to virtue, is the one great Ibsen merit. . . .All I venture to point out, with an increased firmness, is that this omission, good or bad, does leave us face to face with the problem of a human consciousness filled with very definite images of evil, and with no definite image of good. To us light must be henceforward the dark thing--the thing of which we cannot speak. To us, as to Milton's devils in Pandemonium, it is darkness that is visible. The human race, according to religion, fell once, and in falling gained knowledge of good and evil. Now we have fallen a second time, and only the knowledge of evil remains to us.

I might add that we have now fallen (or are attempting to fall) a third time, refusing to recognize the knowledge of good or evil. If I haven't destroyed comprehension and context by chopping up the (several pages long) quote, you can see that Chesterton opines on the modern sensibility's ignorance of an absolute Good. He cites literature--primarily Ibsen's--as an example of modern society's acknowledgement of the bad and ugly with a seeming confusion when it comes to finding the source of good. I think, in our now post-modern society, we have gone a step further and ceased to recognize the bad or the ugly. "Tolerance" is our key virture, whether what we are tolerating is helpful or harmful. Perhaps that is the inevitable result of losing the light; we soon cease to distinguish the darkness. Instead of being surrounded by images of evil, we are surrounded by confusion and open-armed acceptance. Not only do we not know which way is up, we have forgotten there is also a way down.