Well I updated the blogroll by deleting dead-sites, changing links for moved sites and adding a new site.

I wanted to bring your attention to the new site, as it’s really good. It’s called Building Cathedrals and the site best describes it’s title:

“A mother is the most important person on earth. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any Cathedral — a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body.” — Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty (as quoted by Danielle Bean)

If that doesn’t peak a parent’s curiosity, a summary of the authors may:

Seven young, Catholic mothers who graduated from Princeton University, seeking to build our families just as the architects of the great cathedrals built their detailed masterpieces: day by day, stone by stone, with attention to details that only He will see.

Seven bachelors degrees, four advanced degrees, and nearly 200 combined months of pregnancy have only convinced us of how much we have left to learn in matters of faith, family and vocation. We adhere wholeheartedly to every doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church, but the details beyond that, from co-sleepers and breast pumps to schooling options and professional life, are grounds for robust discussion with like-minded friends. Nothing written on this blog is intended to incite maternal guilt, anger or to advise on medical or legal matters. Virgin most prudent, pray for us!

The content of the site reflects the thoughtfulness of the title and summary. There’s a humility and honesty that is rarely found in their posts as they feel their way through parenting. Go take a look, particularly all you parents out there.

Well, while the fasting is going well, in fact I’m surprisingly not hungry considering my last meal was 27 hours ago (but who’s counting) and it was my only meal since Tuesday evening, the prayers are not going so well.

Last night I forgot to pray my Rosary.  It was my plan to pray it again with Gregory around 7 PM, but I was so exhausted in the evening that it slipped my mind.  To add insult to injury, while I managed to do the Reading of the Office for Ash Wednesday yesterday, I didn’t get to the Thursday set of prayers.  I managed to get the Thurday set in today and I’ll try to “catch up” this afternoon.

The Rosary on the other hand I’ll just have to miss and will plan on praying it tonight one day down.

A prayer for today:

Heavenly Father, forgive me my many failings and help me to grow stronger.  Help me to remember to keep you and my promises to you at the fore-front of my mind at all times and to faithfully follow Your Will at all times.  Help me to see Your Will in my life.  As with all my prayers, I ask this in Christ’s name, who lives and reigns together with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever.

Many don’t know what the Litury of the Hours is, so I thought I’d post about them.

The Liturgy of the Hours dates back to St. Benedict.  He desired that those who participated in the monastic life read the entire book of psalms (more accurately, prayed those psalms) every week.  As with most practices in the Church, over time the practice was broadened to include more of the Church and the pacing for reading the entire book was slowed to 4 weeks.  Again as time continued, there were additional prayers and readings that were added to round out the psalms making it more like a service than a private prayer.  Eventually the combined prayers, reading and psalms became the “official” daily prayer of the Church.

The prayers are broke up into a number of sessions throughout the day:

• Morning Prayer
• Reading of the Office (can be before or after Morning Prayer)
• Daytime Prayer (which is further broken into Midmorning, Midday and Midafternoon)
• Evening Prayer
• Night Prayer

As you can see, it’s a nearly hourly set of prayers that are to be a constant presence in the life of those who participate in it.  Generally that means that it is limited to group participation in monastaries and convents or other communal living environments of faithful Catholics.  For the rest of us, including most priests and bishops, it is a private set of prayers that is done on one’s own.

The “Big 3 prayers” of the day are Morning Prayer, Reading of the Office, and Evening Prayer.  These three consist of a Hymm, a set of psalms to pray, a reading or two, and a closing prayer.  The reading is short for the Morning and Evening prayer and is lengthy for the Reading of the Office.  For the office, it generally consists of 1 Sunday Mass sized reading from scripture and 1 Homily/Sermon from a saint of old.

To give an example, the Reading of the office today consisted of reading psalm 103 in three parts (it’s a fairly long one, on other days you’ll read 3 separate psalms), a reading from Isaiah 12 and an excerpt from a letter to the Corinthians by Pope Clement (who was Pope from AD 88-97, or the 4th Pope and said to have been ordained (not as pope, but as either priest or bishop) by St. Peter himself).

The other three prayers are shorter in nature and forcus more exclusively on the psalms.

For me, although I have attempted to do all the prayers throughout the day, the reality is that someone with a growing family, a full-time job and more hobbies than he should, I just can’t find the time in the day to do all of the prayers.  As a result, I have limited my use of these prayers to the Reading of the Office.  While it means I don’t get the full set of psalms over the 4 weeks, I do get a very good sampling of them, as well as some wonderful readings both from scripture and many early fathers.

And as many have said, to read the early fathers shows just how Catholic the early Church was.

No, not on the fasting.  That I did great on, as far as execution goes (although I was VERY grumpy last night).  I also managed to get in my Rosary last night with Gregory at my side… he was fascinated by it and you could tell that he had vague memories from when he was less than a year old when I’d take him to daily Mass while Wendy was at work and then pray the Rosary (he’d play with the beads from inside his car carrier, just like he played with them last night, now as a 4 1/2 year old).

No, what I blew it on was the Litury of the Hours, Reading of the Office (which I called “Litury of the Office” in my original list).  I didn’t do my Ash Wednesday prayers.  I could say that I lost my prayer book, which is true until about 5 minutes ago when I realized it was hidden in a buried corner of my cubicle, but that would effectively be lying as I didn’t go looking for the book until this morning.

So today I’m going to read both yesterday’s and todays.

About the fasting, I weighed in at 276 this morning, 4 pounds less than yesterday’s 280.  That was before I ate my big breakfast (I didn’t weigh myself afterwards).  If I follow the trend of previous years, tomorrow I should be between level and down another pound or two.  After the first 4 or 5 days I’ll have dropped about 7-10 pounds and then lose another 10-20 over the 6 weeks of lent.  The thing about fasting is that you can literally feel your body eating away at itself.

Thankfully today I can drink all the water I want, which will both keep my hydrated (which should help with the headaches) and fill my stomack when I absolutely need something in there.

Join me in another prayer, will you?:

Lord, help me to fast not as the hypocrites but as a man desiring to grow closer to you.  Help me to remember the words of your prophet: “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.” (Isaiah 58:6-8) to remind me that forgoing food alone is not enough, that I must also be an instrument of your justice in this world. Amen.

I’m dying for something to drink, anything.  I’ve got a headache.  I’m starving.  And the worst part is I know that it’s only going to get worse until tomorrow morning when I have breakfast.  After that, I’ve got to “move” my meal back during the day.  So the plan for the next few days is breakfast Thursday, lunch Friday and dinner Saturday.  That helps so that the next time I’ve got something that will heavily tax me, I can move up the next meal the following day to get by.

But just like anything where one goes cold-turkey, the first day is the worst.  I start with the highest level of fasting on the first day, drop into an overly aggressive fasting to move it back in the day over the next few days before I can settle into a routine of having dinner every night.

So far, my crys for relief from God are still few and far between as my mind is more likely to crave than pray.  Say a prayer with me, will you?:

God, help me to find the strength you have provided me to fast.  Forgive me my sins and help me to remember those in need who are hungry through no fault of their own.  Give me the grace to fast as Christ reminds us: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.” (Matt. 6:16-18). Amen

I doubt there is anyone out there reading this who isn’t coming from my Cal blog (http://ExcuseMeForMyVoice.com), but starting today, this blog is back.  Today is, of course, Ash Wednesday.  I will be commenting daily on my Lenten fasting as well as generally my spiritual progress.  I may also post on current events as they relate to Catholicism.

For Lent, I intend to accomplish the following things:

• Pray the Rosary daily
• Pray the Liturgy of the Office daily
• Participate in Stations of the Cross at least twice
• Go to confession
• Fast for the entire period of Lent

For those who don’t know the guidelines of fasting in the Catholic Church, they are as follows:

• You are allowed one meal a day
• You can have up to two snacks, which combined do not add up to another meal
• There is no explicit guidelines regarding drink, but it is considered “bad form” to be drinking filling items such as a smoothy or shake or even a soda and not be counting that towards the snack
• Meat is allowed in the meal except for days of abstinence (like Fridays during Lent)

I will not be having either of the allowed snacks and will only be drinking water.  On manditory fasting days (of which today, Ash Wednesday is one of the two), I will abstain from all food and water for the entire day.

Fasting is VERY difficult for me.  I’m a big guy.  This morning I weighed in at 280 lbs.  I expect that by Easter day I should weigh in at somewhere between 250 and 260 lbs.  This is not a diet!  I fully expect to gain at least half of that weight back in the following week.  But as the body is denied food, it eats into one’s muscles and fat as well as one’s organs like the Liver to get the calories it isn’t getting from food.  The muscles aspect should not be overlooked as I often feel very phsyically weak during fasting.

So why do I do it?

Well, it’s hard to explain in a paragraph but I think the simplest way to state it is that there is no better way to connect with God than to put oneself entirely in His hands.  There is NO WAY I could fast for that long without prayer and asking Him for the strength and determination it takes to deny oneself food that the body desperately wants.  Since over the course of time and routine it is easy to loose that tight connection I’ve had with God, it is important I find ways to re-connect and for me, fasting is by far the best at helping me to do that.

For all those who pray, I’d be blessed if you could offer up a prayer for my well-being during this fast and that it strengthens my relationship with Our Savior.

This is my first non-Cal Bears post in a while.  I’ve been in a rut blogging wise since most of my blog readers are Bear fans.  I’ve got some plans in place to change how things are organized and better split out the two sets of blogging.

But yesterday there was an article in the Chronicle about a man who forgot to take his 11 month old son to daycare and left him in the car while he worked.  He wasn’t discovered until 7 hours later when he was dead.

Obviously this is a tragic situation.  Many have asked how it is possible to forget a child in the car.  In many ways I can understand both sides of that.  On the one hand, I can’t imagine doing it.  On the other hand, I know how life can be and how it is easy to get in auto-pilot.  Along those lines there was an interesting comment in one of the articles about the incident:

But the number of deaths began a steady climb in the mid-1990s as campaigns began encouraging parents to put car seats in the backseat because of airbag-related child deaths — which since have been nearly eliminated.

It always amazes me how often we as a society forget how tightly inter-related things can be.  We move all kids into the back seat for safety reasons, and then more kids die because they’re forgotten in the back seat.  In this case it is safe to assume that more kids were dying from airbag injuries so it was probably still the right decision to put kids in the back seat.  That said, it amazes me how often we forget that new laws have unintended consequences.

The other thing I wanted to note was the large number of individuals who assert some eugenic solution to bad parenting, either in general or in this particular case.  It’s amazing just how prevalent the “people need to take a test to be a parent” ideology comes out.  Occasionally those comments are people exagerating, but I’ve found more and more, as can be seen by the very specific implementation ideas they put forth, the proponent is all too serious.  When one adds in those who think this father’s punishment should be sterilization… it just sickens me how many people have not learned from our past about the dangers of Eugunics.

(Note to readers: Today we continue in our look back at the games in the 2006 season with Arizona.  Here are links to our past look backs: Tennessee, Minnesota, Portland State, Arizona State, Oregon State, Oregon, Washington State, Washington and UCLA).

The storyline:
8th ranked Cal went to a rising in respect Arizona flat-footed, looking forward to their matchup with USC the following week, and was caught off guard in a 20-24 upset.  The Arizona defense was the story of the day, holding the Cal offense to 20 points, their lowest score since the opening week loss to Tennessee.

The reality:
The only contradiction to the storyline is that Cal overlooked Arizona.  Cal was ready for this game.  The only player who really looked off the mark was Longshore, but he looked similarly weak in the Washington game.  Arizona’s defense deserves a lot of credit for their aggressive play, particularly the goal-line stand in the 4th quarter with Cal trailing by 7.  Although Cal should have scored, Arizona played incredibly well.  The key to this game was that everything that could go wrong for Cal did.  The clock worked against them.  The bounces went against them.  The referees definitely worked against them.  While we’re on the subject, I hate blaming games on the referees and I want to make it clear that Cal could and should have won the game despite the calls, but the referees in this game were atrocious.  Here’s the list I saw:

• Bad block in the back penalty on Marshawn Lynch TD run cost Cal 4 points (TD turned to FG).
• Pass after crossing line of scrimmage was obviously not the case and had to be reviewed to be overturned.
• Didn’t call block in back on Cal player on punt (helped Cal, but not much)
• Out of bounds on AZ WR not called.  Had to be reviewed and review didn’t catch where he stepped out at 19 yard line.  Cost Cal another 4 points.
• Marginal holding penalty cost Cal an interception.
• Bogus pass interference call on Hughes cost Cal another interception on same drive.  Cost Cal another 4 points.
• Missed out of bounds on DeSean that review had to overturn (correctly) Cal TD.

Cal still should have won this game but the officiating cost Cal 12 points and was bad even when it was in Cal’s favor.

The forgotten:
Forgotten in this game was that Cal was up 17-3 at halftime.  This is particularly forgotten by those who say Cal overlooked Arizona.  Additionally forgotten in this game was how well Larson and Schneider kicked.  Just about every kick off was out of the endzone and Schneider nailed both his field-goals, one 46 yarder and one highly angled 20 yarder.  Also forgotten was just how poorly Longshore played.  He overthrew Jackson on a easy TD.  The interception that put Arizona up by 7 was probably Longshore’s worst decision of the year throwing into triple coverage on an out play where the corner had an easy read on the out.  In fact, that was one of many poor throwing decisions he made.  In addition there were many poorly thrown balls, one of which led to a second interception.  That said, the final interception was just bad luck on a lucky tip at the line.  The final forgotten item, at least to some, was that DeSean Jackson was sick.  It’s amazing he played as well as he did but he didn’t return punts for all of the 1st half minus the first one that he ran back for a TD.

The 2006 learnings:
Arizona was the first team to successfully slow Cal’s offense with an aggressive defense.  Washington State, Washington and to a lesser degree UCLA all slowed Cal by playing soft on Cal’s receivers.  While it was somewhat successful, it didn’t give many opportunities for interceptions or stopping Cal in the redzone.  Arizona used its hard-hitting yet fast defense to both slow Cal and force mistakes that would result in Arizona points, something none of the previous opponents had managed.  This was definitely important since interception resulted in 10 of Arizona’s 24 points and the goal-line stand stopped Cal from tying the game.  They would not have won the game without their aggressive play.  Although most focused on Cal’s offensive mistakes and miscues, the successful strategy was definitely a bad omen for the upcoming USC game.  At the same time, the Cal defense also stepped up big in this game.  Had Arizona had any offensive rhythm, Arizona could have blown out Cal starting in the first half but the Cal defense stepped up every time it was asked to.  After a weak performance against UCLA, there was reason to hope that they were back on their game heading into USC.

The 2007 learnings:
SydQuan Thompson had another incredible game.  It was Hughes who struggled.  Syd tackled well and covered well.  He’s going to be great in ’07.  As for Arizona, so much went wrong for Cal in this game that there is no reason to believe they’ll be able to repeat the performance in ’07 back in Berkeley particularly considering that despite the fact that Arizona has most of their starters back in ’07, the key contributors to the upset have graduated.

The Conclusion:
This game is EXTREMELY painful to watch.  The refereeing.  The trip by Hawkins.  The foot barely on the line for DeSean.  The foot clearly on the line for Arizona… but not called.  The poor play by Longshore.  The inability to score with a 1st and goal from the 1 yard-line.  The fake punt that should have easily been sniffed out by Cal.  The tipped ball the ended Cal’s final drive and comeback attempt.  All of it was just a disaster of the worst order.  Amongst all of that it’s easy to overlook the quality of the Arizona’s defensive play, which was the reason that all of those painful plays mattered.

This is a hilarious column about how Dad’s get the shaft compared to Mom’s and mother’s day.

While the column is entirely light hearted and not intended to be any treatise on being a good father, the comments on the article at SFGate.com got surprisingly nasty.  Comments about how “too bad you’re kids suck” or whining from fathers about what they did or didn’t get that just isn’t funny.  But one comment struck me as true, although way too negative for such a light-hearted column:

Dads are for giving not getting… I don’t need from the kids I give to the kids. Someday they’ll know this and appreciate it. Hallmark moments are for the ladies…

While I think mothers also get great joy in giving to their children and the “Hallmark moment” statement is over the top, I think it is very different for fathers than mothers.  For mothers, I think providing has a much more emotional aspect to it and a more protective manifestation.  For fathers, providing is much more material and concrete.  Men really do like to provide for the family.  I’ve found it to be true myself.  In fact, it’s surprised me just how important it is to me to be able to provide for my family and the offense I take when I find myself unable to provide or I get criticism of what I provide.  Said another way, I take great pride in it.

Before my favorite blog critics jump in and call me sexist, I’m not at all saying that a woman isn’t capable of materially providing for a family.  Nor am I saying that it is wrong for a woman to work or for her to make more than her husband.  Nor am I saying that it is intrinsically wrong for a man to stay home and take care of the kids.

What I am saying is that I think men are “wired” in such a way that they take great pleasure in providing both the material and moral foundation for their family.  When I think of what I most appreciate about my dad and what I goal for in being a dad it always comes back to the lessons I learned from him (moral foundation) and the sacrifices he made to make sure that I always had a roof over my head (material foundation) until I graduated from college, debt free I might add.  Those foundations made me into the man and father I am and I pray that I can continue good a father and husband for the rest of my days.

What do I want for father’s day?  I don’t want a gift or a bad golfer card (an aspect of the column I found particuarly funny), I want the satisfaction of watching my children play freely in the backyard knowing they are safe and provided for, knowing that I gave that to them.

I was thinking over the various issues associated to ESCR (Embryonic Stem Cell Research) when a thought occured to me: everyone always recoils over the issue of cloning, but why is that?  I mean, I know why I’m against it.  It’s contrary to God’s design of how we are conceived, which is naturally through sexual intercourse.  But most of society doesn’t agree with me about that being at all important as can be seen by the vast support for test tube babies and the such.

Is there are argument against reproductive cloning that doesn’t hinge on natural conception?

I’m not talking about arguments against killing embryos/babies like ESCR or organ farming would do.  I’m talking about arguments against creating a cloned embryo, implanting that embryo in a woman and raising it as if it were a regular son or daughter, particularly arguments that don’t also apply to non-eugenic (i.e. sex selection, disability filtering, etc.) artificial implantation.

Anyone have any ideas?