Therese in the footsteps of the saint

Marie Therese turns 15 today. She's named after St Therese of Lisieux, and seems to have inherited some of the saint's characteristics.

According to the website of the Society of the Little Flower she was precocious and sensitive and needed a lot of attention. (Yes, that sounds like my own Therese.) Also, Saint Therese, after an experience that changed her at the age of 14 years, turned her energy and spirit "toward love, instead of keeping herself happy."

This reminds me of a conversation I had with my Therese recently. She was telling me how sad it was that youth nowadays are being taught to help others because helping others will make them (the youth) happy.

"What's wrong with that?" you may be asking.

While it's true that helping others brings with it a warm fuzzy feeling, surely the motivation to help should not come from the selfish desire to achieve that warm fuzzy feeling. There will be times when that warm fuzzy feeling may not come, and then you are left regretting the waste of effort or resources. Also, if you help others only to gain something for yourself, you are not likely to help others when there is a cost to oneself greater than the potential gain.

I know I'm not explaining very well, just ponder it yourself. At least I know that my Therese has got it right, and in her own little ways, makes little sacrifices to make life better for others, even if they don't make her happy. 
 



  

Blessie's Blessing

And the king will say to them in reply, 

'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did 

for one of these least brothers of mine, 

you did for me.' -- Matthew 25:40

(Thank you, Blessie, for taking the time to view this blog and for your advice. If you look to the right of this, you'll see I followed it.)

Blessie is a writer, editor, homeschooling mom and rabbit raiser. See more about her here. Her blog,  The Nanay Notebook, is the only blog I follow. Yesterday morning I sent her an email to let her know I was reviving this blog. To my pleasant surprise I got an email back from her with advice to add a Follow by Email gadget to this blog.

I've done as she suggested; so please, if you are reading this, do enter your email into the text box at the right under Follow me :). Thank you in advance.   

So anyway, I've got that bible verse up there because Blessie's act of kindness reminded me about it. Jesus himself, in effect, is clearly saying we should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, care for the ill and visit prisoners.

We can extend the idea to the extent that any good thing we do for anyone is a good deed done to Jesus. And then we can jump to the reverse of the idea: any good thing done to us by anyone is a blessing from God. Does that make sense? Well, that's the train of thought that made me think of the verse: Blessie's advice is God's way of helping me out with this blog. After all, it is called "living by his grace" because I hope to share how my life has been, and is constantly, shaped by God's grace.

So, as much as I dislike the Pollyanna route to happiness: "There but for the grace of God go I."

Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas

I don't know much about Saint Thomas or Natural Law. And much as I wish I had time to study about both, right now I don't.

But the Internet is really a wonderful resource and in less than five minutes, I've found out a nugget about St. Thomas: he wrote hymns!

A YouTube search resulted in this find, may it be a good start to this Tuesday.

 

New Year's Resolution

January is almost done and I haven't even made my list of resolutions for 2014.

Here's the first one: write for this blog.

Recently I was asked by someone I'd just met: "So, you like to write?"

I didn't know what to say. I no longer know if I like to write. Editing has been my bread-and-butter for years now, writing seems unreal.

Do I enjoy writing? I don't even know what to write about. I think I don't have enough of an ego to write. I don't have anything to say. I don't have anyone to say anything to.

These are just some of the thoughts that have come to me in response to the question.

But I remember now, this morning. I used to want to be a writer. I used to know that I had the skill to write. I had the ideas. I had the nerve.

So my first resolution for this no-longer-so-new year is to write right here. Once a week. Preferably on Monday when work hasn't piled up over my head yet. Write for myself. Try to gain back the writing mojo.

Thank you, new friend, for asking me that question. 

Saint Joseph Cathedral, Balanga, Bataan

I was able to visit the St. Joseph Cathedral in Balanga, Bataan, on March 9, 2012.

Posture modifies pain tolerance

Can standing erect and adopting a powerful pose increase a person's pain tolerance?

This is the question Scott Wiltermuth and Vanessa K. Bohns set out to answer in their study "It Hurts When I Do This (or You Do That)" published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
And they found out that it does indeed.
Wiltermuth and Bohns had two hypothesis: The first was that people who were made to pose in positions that express dominance would have increased pain thresholds while those who adopted submissive postures would have decreased pain threshold. The second hypothesis was that when the subjects would be made to interact with dominant or submissive people, they would adopt the postures that would complement the behavior of the person they were interacting with, and their pain thresholds would be affected accordingly.
The research involved 44 female and 45 male participants. To test the first hypothesis, yoga poses were used. For the second, the interaction partners varied their body positions, the volume of their voices, and the space between themselves and the subject to present either a dominant or submissive persona. Pain threshold for both experiments was measured using a blood pressure cuff which was tightened until the subject said “stop.” For the interaction experiment, handgrip strength was also measured.
Results were positive for both hypothesis. That is, as stated in the report's abstract “participants who adopted dominant poses displayed higher pain thresholds than those who adopted submissive or neutral poses,” and “participants who interacted with a submissive confederate displayed higher pain thresholds and greater handgrip strength than participants who interacted with a dominant confederate.”
The results are important because of their implications for pain management. From the first experiment it is clear that the simple act of adopting dominant poses can increase pain tolerance. On the other hand, the second experiment has lessons for interactions between patients with pain and their caregivers, including doctors, nurses and family members. It appears that the people who care for patients in pain must make an effort to become more submissive and let the patient become the dominant person in their interactions.
Scott Wiltermuth is an assistant professor of management organization at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, and Vanessa K. Bohns is a postdoctoral fellow at the J.L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Right lessons learned now wrong

The world of Science is always growing, changing.

Recently, two very basic things I learned as true I found out are false.

1. The main function of sex is to promote genetic diversity. FALSE.
"Rather, it's about keeping the genome context -- an organism's complete collection of genes arranged by chromosome composition and topology -- as unchanged as possible, thereby maintaining a species' identity." Read about that here.

2.  Organisms with identical genes will develop in the same way under identical conditions. Except for identical human twins, that is. FALSE.
Read about that here.

There was another one, but I am getting old and I forgot what it was.

I love ScienceDaily. :)