Very nice meeting

With Teri out of town and the parish planning meeting for special musical events moved to earlier in the day, I was free to attend the family praise and worship meeting in the St. Julie Center last night. Several of the young folks had attended the Encounter conference for young adults in St. Louis, and reported on the things that struck them.

They shared some really practical things related to overcoming habitual sin. They also shared a very flexible prayer paradigm that I am already finding useful for restoring my daily prayer time. Mine had definitely taken the downward turn I anticipated when I completed the Spiritual Exercises, which had also left me separated from my only Strength in the face of temptation. I'm concerned about how close I was to making a foolish decision. I don't think it would have led me into true catastrophe - which would have still been of a very different nature from where I was two decades ago - but it would have been another baby step closer. Last night and this morning had very different thought, emotion and prayer dynamics as a result of attending this meeting.

I faced a pretty clear decision point last night about whether to go, at which time it was clear that I was deciding what was more important to me. I can see that God has blessed me with a desire to live according to His vision for my life and continues to honor every choice I make to act according to that desire.

Today's words

garderobe \GAR-drohb\ - 1. a wardrobe or its contents  2. a private room : bedroom  3. privy, toilet

It seems odd to me, at first, that this new word would describe three different types of rooms. But then again, I'm in the middle of reading Bad English, so all of the strange quirks of our language seem more normal now. Some of the etymologically-related words surprised me, too.

donnicker \ˈdä-ni-kər\ - toilet 3a

I suppose around the 1930's someone decided they needed a more socially acceptable term for toilet. This one seems more highfalutin than privy, which I was surprised to see primarily refers to an outhouse. Apparently the synonymous sense of loo didn't develop for nearly another decade.

This post belongs in the water closet.

Late night truth

I persist in sinful thoughts because the resulting endorphins distract me from - and feel better than - my despair.

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries

Today's words

No new ones today. But I want to save this link to temerity because of the succinct explanation it provides of the distinctions among it and audacity, hardihood, and effrontery.

Today's word

interpellate \in-ter-PELL-ayt\ - to question (someone, such as a foreign minister) formally concerning an official action or policy or personal conduct

While I recognized that this WOTD from last week would have a pronunciation and meaning different from "interpolate," I didn't know what it might mean until I read it. (But by and large, the dearth of new words for my vocabulary in this daily feature continues.)

Long-ago rewritten history

I disagree with this guy's conclusions concerning what should be done about this issue today, but this is the second place I've read about the misunderstanding of the role of states' rights in the Civil War. These two articles have confirmed my own new insight on the roots of the war based on my recent first reading of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The southern states adamantly opposed northern states' rights to not support the institution of slavery, particularly the Fugitive Slave Act and the move to prevent new territories from starting with a bias toward slavery. The primary issue over which they seceded seems to have been to preserve and expand their economic model which was strongly based on slavery and the fear of what would happen to their way of life should slavery be abolished.

We - well, well-schooled lawyers, anyway - can argue all day about whether states had at that time or today have a right to secede from the United States of America. If so, that would probably make the Civil War technically about states' rights. But there is strong evidence supporting the slavery issue as far and away the motivating reason for southern states' secession. They wanted to preserve their own rights to their slave "property" - along with the economic model that came with it - and (particularly) force northern states to recognize slave owners' right to own and recover their slaves the same as any other property over which they might retain possession when it passed within another states' borders. They also wanted new territories to be allowed to govern themselves on the slavery model even before they reached the less-federally-controlled status which came with statehood, if the (white) residents of the territory so wished.

In our free nation, I will simultaneously defend your individual right to display the confederate flag as an expression of what it represents to you and try to help you understand why many view it as a symbol of racial oppression. I will also help you to understand that your free speech rights come with the same consequences to which all of our speech is always subject, and none of us is free from the court of public opinion. I am largely of the opinion that state and local governments have no more business flying it than they do the flag of the United Kingdom.

Today's words

WOTD has gotten into one of its dry spells, not (directly) serving me up very many new words. Fortunately I'm finding some in other places. Today's was the first Dictionary Devil puzzle to expand my vocabulary.

bijouterie \bi-ˈzhü-tə-(ˌ)rē\ - a collection of trinkets or ornaments

I was familiar enough with bijou to match this definition to its word with no problem.

anhinga \an-ˈhiŋ-gə\ -  any of a genus (Anhinga) of fish-eating birds related to the cormorants but distinguished by a longer neck and sharply pointed rather than hooked bill; especially :  one (A. anhinga) occurring from the southern United States to Argentina

This one was completely new, but I didn't have to resort to the process of elimination to place its definition. It just seemed right. 

While the words of the day have not themselves included very many new ones for me, write-ups like today's have included some interesting etymology's, as well as links to new related words, such as:

tottery \ˈtä-tə-rē\ - of an infirm or precarious nature

Sadly and currently relevant, my son-in-law's mother's had long been in tottery health, so her family has declined an autopsy the specific cause of her death in the nursing home is not so important to know.