…Or else your in their power. And they will take away your website.

It’s a bit odd, to write oneself out of a mood. The writing leads to thinking and the thinking to all the distractions that one couldn’t conjure when one was trying desperately to dispel his mood, for he knew that he didn’t want to have to fall asleep feeling miserably. Then one looks at what one wrote and he has to make a decision whether this is really what he wants other people to know — are these the thoughts that I want to put out there? My words may come back to me void or never come back at all, but they are there, out there, somewhere. Someone has scanned through them and hurried one to read the intimate spillings of the next writer, or he has even given them a second thought and commiserated with or judged against them. And then, I cannot take them back. They’re said. There’s no erasing the anonymous mind.

The water in Valparaiso is remarkably hard and even when we hand dry the dishes after washing, the water still, more often than not, leaves watermarks all over our glasses, flatware, and stainless steel items. Any old wives tips for avoiding waterstains? There must be some solution.

Here’s a garmet cleaning tip for merlot spills that has saved our very lives more than once: Mix a solution of two parts Dawn dish soap, one part peroxide. Dip a rag in solution and immediately rub merlot stain. Comes out right quick.

In a recent interview (January 23) Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a well-known author and priest from the Archdiocese of New York (I read his Death on a Friday Afternoon as a Lenten devotional last year, and recomend it) discusses how excluding Protestants from Eucharist is in the interest of ecumenicalism, and offers an understandable rational.

Among other interesting statements, a keen observation on the general psychology and chaos of protestant churches:

‘Cardinal Ratzinger has suggestively noted that, for Protestants, the decision for Christ and the decision for the church are two decisions, whereas for Catholics the decision for Christ and his Church is one decision. ‘

I will talk more about this later. Right now, I just want to remind myself to look at it again.