…I wandered around, and finally found, the somebody who…
 

 
Gaudium et Spes:
Man “can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself” to another person. For me and Katie, this means giving ourselves to each other in marriage, please God! It seems so paradoxical, that we fully find ourselves in giving ourselves. Our society tells us the exact opposite, to maximize what we get, our comfort, our self, but when we follow this law of the world, we end up miserable, hurt, and resentful, full of bitterness and sadness, or worse.
 
When we follow God’s revealed truth and make a gift of ourselves, we find that every sacrifice can be united to our Lord’s and therefore is sweet and efficacious, that every trial is a hidden blessing and a chance for more grace, and every hurt is a time to grow closer in love through forgiveness.
 
May we all seek our Lord’s holy vocations for our lives, our personal call from Jesus Christ Himself, to love!

 
but who’s counting, right?
 
“How can I ever express the happiness of a marriage joined by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels, and ratified by the Father? . . . How wonderful the bond between two believers, now one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the same service! They are both children of one Father and servants of the same Master, undivided in spirit and flesh, truly two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, one also is the spirit.” –Tertullian
 

 
“I woke up this morning
With this feeling inside me, that I can’t explain
Like a weight that I’ve carried, been carried away, away
But I know something is coming
It’s my marriage to Katie, forever,
And I know it’s amazing, can save me, my time is coming
I’ll find my way out
Of this longest drought
And it feels like today!”
–Rascal Flats (modified)

 
Apologies for not keeping you updated on me and Katie as we prepare for marriage–as you already know if you are married and can imagine if you are not, it’s been busy.
 
Last night, my best man, Robert Berger, threw me a bachelor party! We had a blast, grilling steaks and ribs, playing several hours of volleyball (featuring Nathan’s Chinese-style serves, Brad’s unexpected spikes, a few kick-digs from me, and surprisingly excellent team play from all the guys). My dad came and several good friends from out of town. more…

 
The rains have visited during the past week, here in Austin. For that, we are all very grateful and are breathing a collective central Texas sigh of relief at this reprieve from summer’s heat.
 
But, one resutl is that the grass is growing now. Bless the Lord, we have grass. And, bless the Lord, it’s growing properly. And, bless the Lord, we have no lawn mower here at the future Rose residence on quiet Turtleback Lane. No lawnmower. And, the grass is growing.
 
So, today, I walked outside with a pair of scissors and set about snipping off the stems and heads of the tallest grass patches. And, now they’re all snipped. It seems to me that, if my goal is to become a Proverbs 31 woman, I have a long way to go and best start today with managing this household in a creative and thorough way.
 
Readers, would you like to share stories about your housekeeping or landscaping creativity? YKC!

 
I realized about a week ago that the slow performance of Crescendo (the game I am creating) was due, not to the slow Windows graphics library I am prototyping in, but due to a portion of my code called a quad tree that is supposed to be making the game faster. (Oops! )
 
Read on to see the results of optimizing the quad tree to make it 10 times faster. more…

 
If you have watched some of the news lately, you have seen the hatred of thousands of Muslims against our Holy Father, Pope Benedict.
 
Is it surprising? No, it is not. Is it frightening and disturbing, seeing Muslims burn effigies of our beloved Pope and call for his murder? Yes, it is.
 
How do we respond to such hatred and murderous violence? Should we fear Muslims and hate them in return, burning effigies of them and trying to murder them? No, for Jesus wants us instead to love them. more…

 
Time is literally flying toward me and Katie’s wedding and marriage. She has worked very diligently on it and so have her sisters, family, and other loved ones, and soon it will be here and be beautiful. I am a blessed man!
 
Here is one of our engagement photos:

 
And some lyrics from Rascal Flats that Katie and I both feel were sung for us:
Every long lost dream,
Led me to where you are,
Others who broke my heart,
They were like northern stars,
Pointing me on my way,
Into your loving arms;
This much I know is true:
That God blessed the broken road,
That led me straight to you!
 
Blessings to you in Christ! May you live for Heaven today and may all the saints pray for you.

 
…about Pope Benedict’s speech at his old college. Hopefully you have heard about it already. I found this article in the secular press to be a good rejoinder to their “outrage”.
 
Excerpt:

On the other hand, if you cannot, as part of a lengthy and profound academic lecture, cite a 600 year-old text for fear of stirring the aggravation of noisy politicians half way around the world, what CAN you do? We might as well all retreat into obscurantism. And keep our mouths shut, for otherwise, who knows who we might offend. And if, as a result of the outrage, some Catholics get killed or their churches burned down by offended scholars and textual exegesists it might be thought that Manuel’s original point had rather been made.

 
My parents tell me that they can remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of JFK’s assassination. I suppose I feel the same way about 9/11.
 
I was a junior at Notre Dame, studying abroad in India, when the planes hit the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and rural field. My study group was visiting the village of Mussoorie in the Himalayan foothills that day; we had spent a long day sightseeing, and I was taking a moment alone on the steps of our hotel’s garden, writing a postcard to my parents, when my friend, Beth, breathlessly arrived and sputtered something about CNN and planes in New York City. We had no idea, at the time, what it meant.
 
I remember how we gathered in our hotel room and watched CNN Live, as the second plane plowed into the its tower. We were horrified. We felt very far from home. We cried and hugged each other and prayed a Rosary for all the victims; we later learned that we were united in prayer with our ND community back in the States, as we saw photos of what appeared to be the entire student body assembled on South Quad for an outdoor Mass.
 
The days that followed were tense ones for us. The phone lines were jammed worldwide, so we couldn’t call our parents immediately to assure them of our safety. Parents were calling the University and demanding our immediate return home. We had to say that we were Canadian as we travelled and couldn’t receive visitors to our hotel rooms–no more ordering India-style Pizza Hut! The American Embassy in New Delhi kept close tabs on us. I remember feeling so young and foreign and uncertain of my surroundings.
 
And, then, a few months later, we returned to a somewhat changed country. For the first time, I saw guards holding semi-automatic weapons in the airport. There were American flags flying in front yards. Signs proclaiming “God Bless America” seemed to be everywhere. I felt that, in some ways, I had been cheated from the process of grieving with my country; thus, it is good today, to hear memorials on the radio. It helps to remember and let myself feel sad and proud all at once, for the heroism displayed on the day of infamy. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. YKC!

 
Danielle Bean laid eyes on her son, Daniel Jr., for the first time yesterday. He made his grand entrance and is welcomed to the world by a very happy family. Bless the Lord! You can see his photo at www.daniellebean.com.