Thursday, January 17

Slow blogging day, I know. We've had stuff to do, plus I'm dragging just a little bit. Maybe waking up four times a night is getting just a bit old. Or maybe I'm just a bit old for it.

Made an airport run to test out the new crack security measures. The only confusion we encountered was at the security line where one of the crack security workers insisted that I had to accompany Katie and David to the gate. I was under the impression that I was not allowed to accompany them past security, which was okay with all of us, and has been ever since that particular law was laid down after 9/11. No, she said, it's a new FAA rule, promulgated but two days ago, that people under 18 had to be escorted to the gate by an adult. I would need to go back to the Delta counter and get a special pass.

So, I went back. Before you start feeling sorry for me, remember that this is the Fort Wayne airport, which is not exactly sprawling. The people at the Delta counter were ready for me. "You want to go with your kids past security?" they asked.

"Not really," I answered, telling the so-cold sounding truth. But I had a cranky baby, the plane was twenty minutes away from boarding, and it was okay with everyone if I left. The Delta people looked at me, perplexed.

"So why are you here?" they asked.

"Because she - " pointing down to security - "told me I had to. Said it was a new FAA regulation."

They'd never heard of it. They didn't know what she could have been talking about or why.

Meanwhile, some guy who'd been at security, quietly arguing the "Catch-22 the airlines are finding themselves in" was being escorted back behind the check-in desk, for some mysterious reason, or perhaps, sin.

Good to see the airlines have their act together, isn't it?

Things are finally moving for post-Prove It projects. I just signed a contract to write a volume of Loyola Press' Six Weeks With the Bible series. My volume will be on the parables of Jesus.
More priest troubles of a different sort, and this time down south in Florida:

Feds accuse priest of selling Ecstasy

From his rectory next to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Milton to his condominium on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, a popular priest is accused of buying and selling the party drug Ecstasy and methamphetamine.

His condo on Bourbon Street??????

Today is the feast of St. Anthony. No, he's not the Anthony to whom we pray for help in finding lost things (that's St. Anthony of Padua. This the St. Anthony who sold all he had, gave the money to the poor. and lived in the desert as a hermit and ascetic until he died at the age of 105. He's regarded, of course, as the father of monasticism.

As much as we admire the ascetics, and as much good their decision to live in that way allowed them to do, and as close as it brought them to God, it's good to remember that the Christian ideal isn't defined by asceticism. Jesus was decidedly not an ascetic, and had pointed words for those who criticized him for not being more of one.