The League of Bearded Catholics

Bearded Holiday Fun

I know, I know... I should have been alert and taken some photos, but I was too taken up with the job at hand last week, as my neighbor and all-around building-and-loan-pal Steve and a gathering of friends made a bonfire of Christmas trees, set off fireworks and drank booze to wave goodbye to the old year and welcome the new.

Fire + Explosives + Liquor. I try to set a good example.

It was just the kind of thing neighbors here in teh U.S. ought to do much more often through the year. It was cold as brass lingerie, but around the fire it was quite pleasant, and we all stayed out there talking and joking for hours, and I only saw one tech junkie who could not manage to keep away from his cell phone. He did carry a dandy silver flask, though, which improved my estimation of his overall character. I've been hunting around for a silver flask at flea markets and antique shops, but it has to be the right one, and I haven't found it yet.

I had it on my Christmas list, but buying a flask is almost too much responsibility for anyone but the individual him/herself. Very personal. And, as comic Jim Gaffigan says, giving a flask as a gift is like saying, "Yeah, you look like a drunk on the go."

It was a marvelous time, and one of those little events that ties together all the strands of life, spiritual, physical, emotional. A fully human experience.

Anyway, since I didn't get any photos... it was kinda like this;

 

... only sans the constant terror of gate-crashing Nazgul.

"Chocolate Eggs and Jesus Risen..."

There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.

-C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

Tasty AND Stylish

Photo courtesy of North Dakota Department of Game and Fish

We have not been made aware of any other bird that sports a beard.

Happy Thanksgiving.