-1-
Happy Feast of the Epiphany! Wise
men (and women) still seek out the Light of the World, Jesus Christ. Want to have a wonderful epiphany of your
own? Spend some time being still and
listening to the Lord.
-2-
The Three
Wise Guys: I find this often e-mailed story hilarious. It’s pretty funny what you hear come out of
the mouths of babes, especially when they didn’t quite catch what was
said. Thus you have Christmas play
results like the ones described
here where the three wise men show up with gifts of “gold, common sense,
and fur.”
-3-
La Galette des Rois It’s a tradition in France to celebrate the
Feast of the Epiphany with a galette des rois (or
Kings’ Cake). It is customary to place a
small trinket in the cake made of porcelain or plastic. It is said that whoever gets the trinket in
their slice gets to be queen or king for the day. To make your own galette des rois, check out the recipe here.
While studying Abroad in
Paris I volunteered at a food pantry that received donations from local stores,
bakeries, and such, so families in need could come through and “shop” for
items. We got in tons of leftover
galette des rois, so we were told we could bring some home if we wanted. I got sick of them pretty quickly, which didn’t
happen with any other French pastry or bakery item that comes to mind.
-5-
Potty Math When I was in my senior
year of high school, I went to a woman’s house for math tutoring. Her husband was nearby watching her young
children, one of whom was being potty trained.
One evening, we were in hysterics, because while she was tutoring me at
the dining room table, her husband was mentoring her son in the bathroom where
we could hear both of them. As a thank
you gift, I came up with a list of “Potty Math” definitions of math terms and
framed it for my tutor at the end of the school year. She hung it up in her bathroom.
-6-
Parental Advisory! Unfortunately, it is not safe to assume that
your 6, 7…12 year old isn’t going to look up some songs on Youtube with lyrics
as inappropriate as the music videos themselves. Listen carefully to the lyrics and ask
yourself if they’re really what you want your young ones committing to memory
at such an impressionable age. Tony
Keith’s red solo cup isn’t full of Kool-Aid, it’s brimming with beer, and Ke$ha’s
the wrong kind of “fox in sox” to be showing to your toddler.
-7-
Laughter is lovely. When
at Hollins University, I got in the habit of jotting down funny things
professors or students said during class alongside my notes. One of my favorites that I wrote down during
a Southern Literature course came out when our professor was talking about Flannery
O’Connor stated that the woman “didn’t have a carnal bone in her body.”
I’ve done this other places as well, when
I’ve gone to trainings for various things or am watching a sporting event where
the some of the comments taken out of context would be very interesting to put
in a dialogue for a short story totally unrelated to athletics.
Best snippet I got today was one that made
Kevin and I both laugh. The deacon ended
his homily at Mass this evening with an interesting suggestion: “Bring a torch
to the manger.”
