Tuesday, December 11

A holiday arrangement of flowers in City Hall. Many flowers, pretty stuff. Except for one thing: No red poinsiettas. Why? Someone complained they're a Christian symbol. Oh. But it's a ....Never mind.
Whew. Done with that - at least for now. I just finished writing the family devotional booklet for Advent 2002 for Creative Communications for the Parish. Under great duress, I might add. You'd think after going to bed at 11 and rising at 6:30, a baby would want a good, long nap. Not this morning, it seems. But through creative typing, constant change of venues, and new and surprising objects being tossed in the playpen behind my desk chair at regular intervals, we did it. NOW will you take a nap, Joseph? Mommy's got two columns to write in the next 24 hours, after all....
More memories of Tush. See? It wasn't just me.
Speaking of hermits, today is the feast day of Daniel the Stylite, a disciple of the more famous pole-sitting ascetic, St. Simeon Stylites:
Saint Daniel chose a spot in the neighboring desert mountains towards the Euxine sea, four miles by sea, and seven by land, from Constantinople towards the north. A friend erected him a pillar, which consisted of two pillars fastened together with iron bars; whereon another lesser pillar was placed, on the top of which was fixed by other friends a kind of vessel somewhat like a half-barrel, on which he abode, encompassed by a balustrade

Why sit on a pole? My first response is - why do anything? Why work fourteen hours a day so you can buy a big house that you only sleep in? Why bear children whom you're just going to hand over to others to care for? Why bother to go to a church service when you really don't believe anything is true? In light of all of the ways that people spend their life on earth in selfish, pointless pursuits, sitting on a pole as penance and as a way to get people to sit up and pay attention to the Gospel doesn't seem so crazy. To me at least.