Start following the Saints Days and you'll soon be following me into the spiritual rabbit hole that is the Liturgy of the Hours . . . and then you'll start poking into the Martyrology and the Breviarum Romanum and Trent and the Summa Theologica and the architecture of Cathedrals and God only knows what else.

:-)

A short list might also include . . .

The Rosary, the Scapular, the 40 hours, the Sacred Heart, the Litany of the Saints, the Angelus, the Raccolta, sacramentals, the Rituale Romanum, Guardian angels, the True Cross, the spear of Longinus, Gregorian chant . . .

There's two thousand years of stuff to absorb. There's literally no end to it. There is simply no repository of tradition, history, and belief like it in the world -- and it's all just sitting there. I feel like I've been handed the keys to something like the Smithsonian and told to go poke around for a bit and see if anything interests me.

I'm having to read Jaroslav Pelikan's "Emergence of the Catholic Tradition" just so that I have a blueprint of what the place really looks like inside. The more you learn, the more you realize that there's more to learn.

It's ruined Barnes and Noble for me -- they simply don't have the stuff I'm looking for. For instance, I want the texts of all 21 ecumencial councils. I want the complete works of Irenaeus of Lyons. I want a CD of all the psalms sung in Latin, in plainchant. I want a really definitive, annotated Septuagint with parallel Greek, Latin, and English. When they ask me "did you find what you were looking for" I tell them that their collection of Neo-Thomist philosophers is somewhat light, and there is virtually nothing on why the Orthodox churches reject the eighth council. They look at me as if I'm insane. I tell them that I suspect the books I want do exist, but they are probably in the Bodleian library or in the vaults in the Vatican.

I'm going to need a doctorate or two to make sense of it all. And a spiritual director. And probably will need to become a Deacon, if only to see what the reading list is like.

"They look at me as if I'm insane."

Ya think?

Heh.

Fortunately or not, in the divide between foxes and hedgehogs, I am hopelessly one of the world's foxes. I simply don't think I could dive into the Vatican Candy Shop to such depths as to give up my fiddling about with so many other things.

Oh, my apologies to anybody for whom the expression "brutally martyred" induced a fit of eye-rolling. Like there's any other kind of martyrdom. (Well, maybe in the TEC. "We'd like you to consider these other martyrdom options, even if they make you feel slightly uncomfortable.") My bad for redundantly repeating myself twice.

Abstract paintings
Angel painting
animal paintings
ballet paintings
beach painting
Boat painting
building painting
Children painting
Christ painting
church painting
City painting
Cottage painting
Dancer painting
field painting
Floral paintings
Garden painting
Hunting paintings
impressionist painting
Knight painting
Lady painting
Landscape painting
Lighthouse paintings
Music painting
Nude painting
Oriental paintings
Piano painting
Seascapes paintings
Still Life paintings
street painting
sunset painting
Tropical paintings
Venice paintings
Village painting
wine paintingsalvador dali paintings
thomas kinkade paintings
pablo picasso paintings
vincent van gogh paintings
claude monet paintings
diego rivera paintings