The image above is appearing on city busses in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and LA. Click here to see a short video of the reaction people have to these Earth Day bus ads in Chicago.

The rest of my post is copied from here. Go ahead and click on over and see the comments people are leaving in response, if you’re so moved. I found them interesting.

Celebrate Nature’s Greatest Gift: Life!
by Joshua Mercer

CHICAGO – CatholicVote.org says it’s time to use Earth Day to celebrate nature’s greatest gift – human life.

With bus ads starting today in Chicago and next week in San Francisco and Seattle, CatholicVote.org is encouraging Americans to rethink how they celebrate Earth Day, and how we to go about building a culture that respects the environment.

“Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature. We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment,” said Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org Education Fund.

“The members of CatholicVote.org wanted to bring this balanced Catholic view of the environment to the streets,” said Burch, “and that’s why we’ve advertising on over 50 buses in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.”

“Respect for the God’s creation has a long history in Catholic teaching, long before it became popular with our secular culture,” said Burch.

Pope Benedict XVI has been very vocal in support of proper stewardship of the natural resources that all people share together. Newsweek even dubbed him “the green pope.”

Earlier this year, in his annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict said: “If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn?”

The Pope has repeatedly emphasized that respect for the environment must be tied to a larger framework that understands that nature includes a plan of love and truth that comes from God. And the heart of God’s plan for creation is the human person.

In his recent encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.”

The bus ads, which can be downloaded at CatholicVote.org, will run for four weeks. This April 22nd will mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. CatholicVote.org Education Fund is a project of the Fidelis Center for Law and Policy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.

As for me, do you remember the whipped cream from my key lime pie? I used some on our first strawberries of the season, then threw it away to avoid further temptation. Before tossing it, I did NOT spray some directly into Siena’s mouth just to get her reaction. That would have been childish and unsanitary, not to mention setting a bad example for an impressionable young toddler. Not me!

When playing with bubbles, I’ll admit it was amusing that Siena blew a bubble with her mouth when she said “bubble!” after pressing the bubble wand up to her lips. What I won’t admit to though, is trying to re-create that amusing occurrence with my own lips. I’m sure I would have failed anyway, and tasted some nasty bubble solution in the process. So, I didn’t even try. Not me!

We take bedtime prayers very seriously. There’s no way my husband would have added a loud HONK to the middle of a Hail Mary when Siena poked his nose. Not my husband!

Along those lines, if our family were in the cry room in the back of church (a place we never go, since Siena is an angel during Mass) and she looked particularly cute camped out in a kneeler, there’s no way I’d nudge my husband to grab a picture of her with his phone. Not me! And not my husband, either, for that matter!


We don’t have a Chipotle in our town, and really miss it. So most of the time when I’m headed home from visiting my parents, I’ll stop in at Chipotle and bring a burrito home to HawkInWinter. It can be a difficult stop to take Siena out of her seat so soon after strapping her in, hold her in line, hold her as I walk along the sneeze guard requesting ingredients, hold her as I pay and as I carry her out to the car again. This most recent time, when I snagged a spot right in front of the Chipotle with its big windows, the thought never crossed my mind to leave her in the car. I didn’t leave her there as I walked up to see how long the line was, and then come back to get her. No, as soon as I parked, I got her out of her carseat and took her inside. If I *had* had a moment of hesitation though, I would have been quite thankful my conscience won out once I saw a team of firefighters park right next to my car!

I did not use the word “dependation” when discussing the independent and dependent variables in linear algebra. Even if it was well past bedtime, that strange word would not have come out of my mouth.

Siena did not learn the words “Cheeto” or “candy” this week. Nothing like that ever enters our house. Similarly, she did not learn to say “naughty” because there’s never any occasion to use that word around her. She never hits, and never throws spoons, bowls, or cups off her tray, for example.

She has started saying “diaper” and “stinky”, which makes sense because of the huge number we’ve been changing these last 9 days. While packing some away-from-home food for her babysitter, I did NOT grab the container of strained prunes in a moment of obliviousness, only to realize too late that they were the complete opposite of what I should have been feeding her if I wanted to combat her digestive problems. Sigh.

When sitting on the toilet, Siena is never unsupervised. I never step out to change a load of laundry or put clothes away in her room next to the bathroom. That’s precisely why there’s no way I discovered her, sitting on the toilet, with a pile of unravelled toilet paper almost high enough to touch her dangling feet, proud as punch that she’d unwrapped a hidden “doot-do-doo”, or toilet paper tube. (Named for the sound one makes into it, of course.)

How about you? What have you NOT been up to lately?

(Oh, and I’m having the pictures post as thumbnails since there are so many, but you can always click on them to see a larger version.)

We did manage to participate in the parish’s Lenten Soup Suppers both last year and this year. Both years she happily went to various kind women who offered to hold her so we could eat. This year she actually got to eat some soup too!

Here’s the story of our Triduum. I just learned about the Holy Week tradition of Easter cleaning, but I think we’ll add that next year.

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday was one of my favorite days of the liturgical calendar when I was growing up. I loved the foot washing services held at church or school, I loved the Sedar meal our parish put on each year, and I loved the Communion bread and grape juice our family shared at dinner. I loved the symbolism, the tradition, and the history behind it all.

Last year the parish deacon asked our family to be among the twelve parishioners whose feet he and the priest would wash during the Mass. Twelve parishioners represented the twelve apostles, although Siena threw off the count because he told us to take her shoe and sock off too, for good measure. We were seated at the edge of the altar in chairs facing the congregation, and the priest and deacon came around with a bowl, a pitcher, and a towel, and rinsed and dried one foot for each of us.  It’s always a humbling experience that brings the Gospel stories to life for me.  Siena loved it…and the rest of the congregation loved watching her. That girl knew how to work an audience even at five months old!

Our old car insurance ran out Wednesday, our new company started Friday tomorrow, and we’re still getting back on our feet from the weekend’s illnesses. HawkInWinter was able to work from home Thursday and we decided to lay low one more day instead of drive to Mass uninsured.

So we had our own little Holy Thursday and broke bread together. Then topped it off with some butter and agave nectar. Totally how they did it at the Last Supper, right?

Here’s the recipe I grew up with:
1 c Wheat Flour
1 c bisquick
1/3 c honey
1/3 c water

Mix until gooey.
Pat into a greased pie pan.
Bake at 350
20-30 minutes until firm but soft
or microwave 4 minutes and add one minute at a time until not gooey, and cooked in the center

Good Friday

We attended the Good Friday service to mourn Jesus’ death on the cross.  Each parish or Campus Ministry team at the different places I’ve attended  Good Friday services has its own way of  making this unique service dramatic, but they all include minimal decorations. Our altar looked so dark and barren without candles, cloths, banners, statues, flowers, or the tabernacle. The crucifix was covered in a red cloth that matched the priests’ garments.  Often if Siena gets restless in Mass I can point out the flowers, the candles, or Baby Jesus and his Momma and Daddy. She did get pretty restless through the long readings and intercessions, and I wished I had brought more distractions for her than just her new purse and her Nemo Easter Egg. We spent some time in the back on the stairs leading up to the choir loft. Any suggestions for shaping appropriate toddler church behavior are quite welcome! Siena came up with me to venerate the cross, thinking it was pretty silly that we were all giving it a kiss, but happy to play along.

Holy Saturday

………….
Holy Saturday is a day of waiting, remembering Jesus in the tomb, and preparing for the biggest feast day of the year.  We prepared our home, prepared our Easter clothes, prepared some activities for tomorrow, and dyed eggs. We also attended an Easter Egg hunt with some Mormon friends. I’ll need a day or two to get those pictures uploaded since we used the good camera, but these are some I grabbed with the point and shoot as we dyed eggs. As they went into the dye she labelled them eggs, but when they came out colored she considered them balls. Once she figured out that colored eggs are still eggs, she wanted to eat one. She clearly paid attention to my tapping the egg to crack the shell, because she spent a while very seriously tapping her peeled egg on her tray.

In the evening we attended the Easter Vigil, and this time I had a collection of distractions prepared for Siena. There were also plenty of things to point out in our surroundings, and we do that whenever we can so we save the food and toys for when we need them.  I think this is the first year I didn’t attend my home parish for Easter Vigil, so it’s always a bit sad when you’re expecting one thing and get another.  Every other reading was in Spanish, for example, as were most of the songs, the Lord’s Prayer, and every other sentence of the homily.  Mariachi music doesn’t have the same exultant feeling to me as hymns like Roll Away The Stone. Still, the fundamentals were there.

We started off outside with the fire to light the Easter candle, Siena watching from her Daddy’s shoulders, adding her own commentary. Candle. Baby. Dog! (when a neighborhood dog barked) Car. Muah! (blowing kisses from her high perch) We (well, those of us without babies, that is) processed into the dark church with  taper candles lit from the Easter Candle, which held her attention fairly well for the first readings and songs, until it was time to blow them out and the familiar lights turned back on. When Father walked down the aisle sprinkling us with Holy Water, she found that rather entertaining too. During the Liturgy of Baptism, Siena heard running water and wanted to stand on my lap to get a better view. She was at the end of her patience by the time we went up for Communion.  In between all those natural distractions, HawkInWinter and I took turns keeping her quiet with a book, her stuffed dog, water bottle, Rice Chex, Gerber yogurt melts, an empty plastic Easter egg, and stickers and paper. We were asking an awful lot of her by taking her to a two hour Mass and putting her to bed three hours late.  She is now sleeping soundly, likely with no idea what joy tomorrow holds.

Next year we’ll do some simple teaching about the meaning behind the different things we do during Lent and Holy Week, but last year and this year it’s been fun simply to expose her to these aspects of our Catholic culture. For now, I’m off to hide some eggs with my husband!

As a Special Education teacher, I loved watching students progress from parroting words, spoken or signed, to truly using language to communicate. Then again when they transitioned from communicating what they did or did not want, to communicating interesting things in their world – I loved that too.

As a Momma, I have delighted in observing Siena as she learns new words and learns to communicate with us. Her first word was “Hi” and it’s still the word she uses the most. She greets just about every person who crosses her path, and repeats her greeting until she gains their attention. Everybody we pass at the grocery store, at Mass, the Post Office, the doctor’s office, restaurants…she’s not satisfied unless every last person has made eye contact, smiled, and either waved or said “hi.” Even better if they declare how cute she is, or how friendly, or how happy.

At first she struck me as extremely observant, delightedly pointing out dogs, bears, flowers, stars, moons, apples, bananas, and babies in cluttered or busy environments. I often have to look carefully to find the item she’s pointing to, marveling at her attention to detail.

Lately I’ve started to think of these incidents with an analogy. I picture that, for her first twelve months or so, Siena has been seeing the world in black and white, not knowing the names of the things she sees. Then as soon as she learned “flower” it was like every flower in her environment turned to color. It would be like having a Where’s Waldo book where only Waldo and his red striped shirt were in color but busy pages were shades of grey.

If there are only a few colorful items in your world, they’re going to grab your eye even if others don’t give them a second glance. Here’s an example. Ever since Siena learned “moon” she points it out in the sky and in her board books. She’s starting to see moon-like shapes though. She got a St. Valentine’s Day card from her Nonna and Papa with cartoon hearts with big white grins. At first I didn’t understand when Siena was pointing to the hearts and calling them moons, until I realized the crescent smiles looked like moons to her. Same thing the day I peeled a whole banana and showed it to her. And again when she nibbled her canned pineapple ring into a half circle. Both suddenly looked like moons to her.

I love watching her figure out categories and other complexities of language. It used to be that any dot or circle she saw was “ball”, including the heads on the icons for men’s and women’s bathrooms. Then we played with bubbles one day, and one dimensional circles all turned into “bubba”s and only spheres remain balls. There is an exception to her rule though. My favorite “bubba” is the clear plastic ball my drugstore trouser socks came in. When I first bought it she called it a ball, but now it’s her treasured bubble, supposedly because it’s clear?

Based on observations of how she groups her toys, she seems focused on the task of understanding the categories of plants, people, and animals. Her way of distinguishing something as an animal is by making a growling sound. If she knows it’s not a cat, dog, bird, or fish but that it is an animal whose label she doesn’t know, she categorizes it as “animal” by making a throaty “grrrr” sound. (At least that’s my interpretation of what she’s doing.) I laughed so hard the day she was figuring out her new figurine of Crush from Finding Nemo. He’s a turtle with flowers on his shell. She pointed to him and called him a flower – fwowuh. I said yes, he has flowers on his shell but he’s called a turtle. She seemed puzzled that a flower was somehow also an animal, and settled on meshing the two categories by using her guttural, growly voice to declare it “Fwowuh!”

She’s also expressed confusion about Baby Jesus having the same name as the Jesus on the cross at church. There’s a big wooden crucifix leaning against the wall of the room we use as a cry room in the back of the church. A while ago she pointed to him and asked, “Grrr?” as if to say, “Is that an animal?” I told her that was Jesus. She paused for a moment then exclaimed with a tone of recognition: “Baybee!”

She’s paying attention to the language at Mass, too. Soon after she learned the word “sun”, came the reading of the Prodigal Son. You guessed it – each time the priest said “son” Siena happily echoed with “sun.” Another time we were attending the afternoon Spanish Mass since we’d all slept in and missed the morning Mass. She heard the priest say, “manana” and grinned at me like she was in on a joke, and said “Momma!”.

Siena is reminding me of another reason I find language development so fascinating: it helps me see the world through the eyes of a child. Siena’s world is a pretty exciting place, full of friends just waiting to be greeted with a “Hi!” and a huge smile. I sure hope she maintains her joyful optimism as she discovers more and more about the world. I look forward to helping her reveal all of its colors.

My mom used this picture of Siena to illustrate a post she wrote about simplicity being a path to joy. I’m also pretty sure she had Siena in mind for the first few paragraphs of this post. Go check her out by clicking here!

(It’s my parents’ anniversary today, so leaving a comment on her blog would be a great anniversary gift, should you be so inclined )

In the meantime, here are some thoughts on motherhood from CatholicGreetings.org. Forget to send a card to a special mother in your life? Click here to send a beautiful, free e-greeting.

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Motherhood from the outset demands the total gift of self.
—Authentic Catholic Woman

The loveliest masterpiece of the heart of God is the heart of a mother.
—Therese of Lisieux

All women are called to shower their motherhood on the world in the particular ways that God makes possible.
—The Authentic Catholic Woman

Motherly hearts give love for no other reason than the fact that each soul deserves nothing less.
—The Authentic Catholic Woman

Lord Jesus, I plead to you on behalf of my mother. Always she loved me; now, and forever more, envelope her in your infinite love.

—Prayers for Catholic Men

Our mothers have magnified the Lord. They have taught us to rejoice in God.
—Sweet, Sweet Spirit: Prayer Services from the Black Catholic Church

St. Catherine of Siena is one of just three female Doctors of the Church, and can certainly be considered a mystic (her first mystical experience was at the age of six!). Here is an excerpt about her from Foley and McCloskey O.F.M.’s Saint of the Day:

Catherine ranks high among the mystics and spiritual writers of the Church. In 1970 Paul VI named her and Teresa of Avila as doctors of the Church. In recent years, it has been suggested that she (among other possibilities) should be named patron of the Internet. Her spiritual testament is found in The Dialogue.

Tonight we will light her baptismal candle as we thank God for the gift of our daughter and ask St. Catherine of Siena to protect and guide her in a special way. We will pray for her Godparents – one living and one in Heaven – as we know they both pray for Siena. Finally, we will pray for God’s guidance to us as parents, as we are imperfect but eager guides to Siena on her Earthly path to her Eternal Father.

Merit consists in the virtue of love alone,

flavored with the light of true discretion,

without which the soul is worth nothing.
—St. Catherine of Siena