a little less thinking might be good
Pippa sometimes finds things when I'm not specifically looking at her, so it's impossible to know exactly where she's got them from. Today she found two things. First, she found a postage stamp piece of broken glass which I snatched from her just as she was beginning to bite it. Fortunately, the edges of this particular piece were not very sharp and she didn't cut herself. I believe it's a piece of a broken bit of picture frame glass, probably from when a particular picture fell on the floor and broke a few months ago. We of course cleaned very carefully afterwards and since then we've swept and mopped many times, yet today she finds a big piece of glass. It makes you wonder what else you're missing.
Secondly, she brought me a broken brown scapular. I tied the broken string back together and, almost without thinking about it, put it on. I'm enrolled in the scapular but I haven't worn it for years.
Today, and I'd entirely forgotten this, is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which is the title of the Virgin Mary under which she is associated with this devotion of wearing a brown scapular.
I stopped wearing the brown scapular because The Husband told me that to wear the scapular you have to say the rosary every day. Last week I started researching whether that were true. It's not true, but it is true what I suspected at the heart of it, that I was enrolled rather indiscriminately and without properly being catechized on what enrollment meant. The main issue is that enrollment into the scapular can be done by any priest but it's not precisely the same thing anymore as joining a Carmelite confraternity. The "duties" traditionally associated with the scapular have to do with Carmelite spirituality and with being part of a confraternity, and chiefly involve not the rosary, but the Divine Office.
The whole "rosary and scapular" thing comes actually from Our Lady of Fatima, or perhaps more comes to a point there. One of the visionaries said that Mary desired everyone to wear the brown scapular and to pray the rosary. So Fatima devotees got super into enrolling everybody in the brown scapular and getting them to pray the rosary as well, bypassing all the traditional Carmelite spirituality. The Carmelites are slightly bitter about this, if bitter is the right word.
Anyway after reading cursorily over the subject I decided that I probably shouldn't wear the brown scapular, and anyway I didn't know where it was...
Cue today's little Pippa delivery. I hardly thought at all! It was just... what does she have there... it's a broken scapular... oh, I can fix it... and I put it on.
I didn't think about what I had done until hours had passed.
I can take a hint though.
Also, it occurs to me that Pippa was born on Our Lady of Fatima...
Hm.
Secondly, she brought me a broken brown scapular. I tied the broken string back together and, almost without thinking about it, put it on. I'm enrolled in the scapular but I haven't worn it for years.
Today, and I'd entirely forgotten this, is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which is the title of the Virgin Mary under which she is associated with this devotion of wearing a brown scapular.
I stopped wearing the brown scapular because The Husband told me that to wear the scapular you have to say the rosary every day. Last week I started researching whether that were true. It's not true, but it is true what I suspected at the heart of it, that I was enrolled rather indiscriminately and without properly being catechized on what enrollment meant. The main issue is that enrollment into the scapular can be done by any priest but it's not precisely the same thing anymore as joining a Carmelite confraternity. The "duties" traditionally associated with the scapular have to do with Carmelite spirituality and with being part of a confraternity, and chiefly involve not the rosary, but the Divine Office.
The whole "rosary and scapular" thing comes actually from Our Lady of Fatima, or perhaps more comes to a point there. One of the visionaries said that Mary desired everyone to wear the brown scapular and to pray the rosary. So Fatima devotees got super into enrolling everybody in the brown scapular and getting them to pray the rosary as well, bypassing all the traditional Carmelite spirituality. The Carmelites are slightly bitter about this, if bitter is the right word.
Anyway after reading cursorily over the subject I decided that I probably shouldn't wear the brown scapular, and anyway I didn't know where it was...
Cue today's little Pippa delivery. I hardly thought at all! It was just... what does she have there... it's a broken scapular... oh, I can fix it... and I put it on.
I didn't think about what I had done until hours had passed.
I can take a hint though.
Also, it occurs to me that Pippa was born on Our Lady of Fatima...
Hm.