Feb 1 John of the Grating d. 1168

Jack and Thom,
Good morning, I love you
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We had 110101, really 1111? Now it’s 110111, really 11111? We don’t have to wait on November eleventh this year to have that special day, all elevens.

Over a week ago was my last entry. Been a busy week on the edge of everything. On the edge of zero cash – which is an improvement over the negative zone I was in during my trip to long island. Counting each dollar, down to the precise eight needed to cover a check that was kiting until I scrounged up some coins. That’s not counting the debt over my head like a scimitar or a guillotine. Lesson? Learn from your father better than he did from his father.

Your challenge is that you are your father’s sons. And to know yourselves, you need to know your father too. Not your mother’s version of your father – that was a mistake I made too. I grew out of that before your age but it’s still a lingering engravement in my mind. Not your memories shaped by her and the vagaries of pre-inductive reasoning cognitive development phases. You were given two parents for many reasons – one includes so that you can become whom you were created to be and do what you were created to do.

I’m reading Pathfinder. Thanks to Jack, I’m an avid Orson Scott Card fan. Thanks to the Rhinotimes, too but that’s irrelevant to this story. I was in the library last week and there it was on display in the Youth section – as if a thirteen year old is going to glom onto Rigg. It’s very different reading a book that is not mine and which I have to give back to the community. I’ll get my own version when it comes around as a almost 700 page paperback or limps onto the discount list. Until then – however you get your hands on it, I recommend it to you. I also recommended it to Grandpa today – oh by the way, he’s not heard from y’all in too long. Wait much longer and you might regret missing him.

It’s been a curious week of opportunity. Advocacy work for the department of mental health. QI guru for the department of public health. Both experiences are worth novels never mind their own short stories. The “advocate” role has been institutionalized into the mental health hospitals and the leaders, with a straight face cannot fathom why they are still at step one, investigations of complaints, rather than already in the process of eliminating the role altogether. I’m going to see if they let this gadfly near the data and help them go the road not traveled. The public health arena is just now beginning to propose that quality improvement should be an essential management culture. Go figure! It’s been the modus operandi, the modus vivandi in hospital industry for the entire time I’ve worked in hospitals. That’s a scary thought! And now it’s got the backing of the governor and the division director as a cost cutting or service enhancement without added costs strategy. Not a pursuit of excellence!

Then there’s the conversation with the developmental disabilities campus. In the state city of Butner – that’s a phenomenon worth exploring. A city created by public works, sustained by public institutions. How do the residents make it into ‘normal society’ when everyone on the campus is invested in the status quo ante? Empowerment for the public sector worker not the residents! Oh well, Videbimus. I’m just a grump not even a gadfly. Not only, as my cousin said during the viewing, am I beginning to look more and more like my father [beware for yourself], I am sounding like him! Uncle Arch was truly the archetypical spokesperson for the Nolan Clan! The rest of us pretend to be more educated and civilized.

Then there was four visiting teams winning on wild card weekend.

Last night Auburn won the national championship for the first time in 53 years. As an SEC fan, I cheered for them. As a BAMA alum, the cheers provoked a visceral heartburn. If UNCG is 191st in the universe of universities, where is Auburn? Top of the world in football. For one year in a row. Congrats. Roll Tide Roll!

I’m about ten days behind on my February Saints. I have more material on Brigid: one helluva gal! but, I’ve not heard word one from the News Herald. Being ignored seems to be my plight in life. So, I have this forum and the thousand or so people who’ve read, or pinged, my giggerish. Let the ignoring be shouted down! The ole nose versus face thing. Like I told Grandpa, it’s the bishop’s paper for which he has a purpose. But one would think that the editor has a responsibility to be direct rather than ignore my response to HER request. C’est la vie.

If I’m not going to be published in the News Herald, I have greater reason to start submitting to the other dioceses in the country. Let the chips fall where they may. If I target the News Herald and submit to more and more dioceses, maybe I’ll get published. The nice thing about the internet is that it’s a free voice – until the Democrats’ FCC puts its grip around the throat of free speech. Videbimus.

Also, if the News Herald isn’t interested in my writing, there’s less reason for me to be a month ahead on the saints. Except, the submissions to the other papers would argue for similar timing.?



February 1

John of the Grating d. 1168

I looked for more info than Angels and Saints of the Day gave me. The OSV encyclopedia had exactly the same info. A dictionary of saints gave a couple more tidbits. John of the Grating is not a biggie so we get a paragraph or two. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not delving into Butler’s anymore. The modern era of google has made me lazier than I was before – of course laziness is some one else’s fault, not mine! Grandpa says that Dr Kinn told him, for each day in the hospital, it takes a week of exercise to get the body’s stamina and muscle strength back to status quo ante. If that’s true, and I have no reason to doubt him, it’ll take a year+ of weeks for me to catch up again to where I was two years ago. Except that it must be for such long periods the relationships are very different. I’m full of digressions after a week.

John of the Grating was born of poor parents and received a good education. Think about that for a minute or three. Your parents were not poor and you got what kind of education? It was expensive – the most expensive elementary school in Nashville and the most expensive high school in GSO. But did you receive a good education? An education that fostered goodness? After you left the good Dominican Sisters, I would argue that the education you got was less than good.

The endpoint of sainthood does not depend on the relative wealth of your parents. Some would argue that poverty of parents is a plus in the pursuit of sanctity. I’d argue it is irrelevant. It is the ‘goodness’ of the education that fosters a saintly pursuit. For example, how is it a fostering of our ultimate purpose to be told that your faith is not only irrelevant by anathema in a high school assignment to write about ethics in science?

John of the Grating was accepted into the Cistercians at Clairvaux by St. Bernard. Cistercians are probably better known in USA as Trappists – that’d be Thomas Merton as saintly man better known to more, I’d suppose than Bernard. I got introduced to St Bernard, not as a dog, but by my freshman latin teacher – latin, English, and homeroom freshman year and latin teacher my sophomore year at Cheverus, Bernard Murphy, S.J. He made a point of telling us that the pronunciation of his name was the same as the saint’s. Of course, in the Jesuit way of things, knowing about the saint to whom he was given at baptism was a way to get to know the curmudgeon.

Clairvaux and Bernard were a second wave beginning for the Cistercians. (St Robert started his move to begin the Cistercians in 1098; Bernard came along in 1112.) And at the beginning substantial renewal of a renewal order, the selection process is much more crucial. John of the Grating must have shown early on the characteristics St Bernard was looking for. We do ‘know’ about people by where they choose to go to pursue their vocation and with whom they study. How are you doing on that scale?

John of the Grating helped establish monasteries and became an abbot before he was elected to be bishop of Aleth. The encyclopedia made a point of John of the Grating ousting the Moamoutier Augustinian monks from the cathedral and replacing them with canons regular. In other words, he got the Augustinians out of the income stream that he wanted for himself, his purposes, his monasteries, and his Order. Go figure. Besides, it’s much easier to pursue your own agenda when you have your own team in all the key positions and you can lavish rewards on them. Our friends the monks and their abbots have a lot to teach us about management and leadership. Read Bernard’s rules. Learn more than you could possibly be looking for.

I love you
Dad
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