7 Quick peeks at what I’ve been reading online

An ancient first contact story from Ireland? Michael Flynn mulls over the affinity of the Irish for the fantastic.

An account in the Book of Ballymote states regarding Congalach, a tenth-century high king of Ireland: 

 Congalach son of Mael Mithig was at the assembly of Tailtiu one day when he saw a ship moving through the air. Then one of them [i.e. the ship’s crew] cast a spear at a salmon, so that it came down in front of the assembly. A man from the ship came after it. When he seized one end of it from above, a man seized it from below. “You are drowning me!” said the man aloft. “Let him go,” said Congalach. Then he is released, and swims upward away from them.

There is a marvelous invention here: That the atmosphere is an ocean and the ground is the bottom of a sea, and all earthly things are like reefs and fish. Then aliens come along for the fishing and one of them is almost drowned by a curious earthling holding on to the end of a fishing spear, until the wise ard ri bids him let go to save the alien’s life.

On the topic of writing and imagination, MrsDarwin of DarwinCatholic has been reimagining a Jane Austen story and penned (um, blogged) the final installment of her novel Stillwater this past week. It’s good, good stuff. You can find all of the chapters indexed here, and read about the genesis of the novel here.

Vikings really did have warrior women, it seems. Or, as one FB friend put it, “How did they not notice the female pelvises the first time around?” Though, looking closer, the findings are more interesting for what they suggest about Vikings as would-be colonists rather than merely raiders. Still, it’s nice to know there were probably some actual shield-maidens. 🙂

Julie D. reminds us that today is Mother Teresa’s Feast Day, and reflects on how Blessed Teresa of Calcutta reminds us to see and love those in front of us, whose need may be as much of the soul as of the body.

Speaking of poverty of spirit in the midst of plenty, Leticia has some fantastic thoughts on How to Fight the Prosperity Gospel. Guess where it starts?

Continuing that thought, Simcha thinks about how this prosperity gospel has affected how she speaks about God’s generosity:

If my happiness is a sign that God has blessed me, what does that equation say to people who aren’t experiencing “promotion and supernatural increase”? To the people whose house is washed away, whose husband is shot down, whose womb is barren? It says what my reader said, without knowing she was saying it:
God does not love me.
So I don’t say that I am blessed…. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the great stuff that’s been popping up on my blog reader.

It’s been a nutty week, as you would expect from the first week of back-to-school. We’re settling in to a new routine, one that involves a little more independence and a little more responsibility. Gui has begun biking himself to school, while Pascal is still taking the bus. Ætheline is back to spending two days a week in childcare, though I think I probably need to look around for something for at least one more day.

Today I meant to catch up on some of the housework that’s been neglected while spending my days doing paid work and my evenings catching up with my kids and filling out first-week-of-school paperwork. Unfortunately, today was also mid-August-level hot, which left both Aetheline and I feeling grouchy and out-of-sorts! Once the boys got home from school, I suggested a quick trip to the beach to cool us all down. Pascal was all for it, but Gui volunteered to stay home and cook dinner instead.

I still have to tidy and clean tonight, including the inadvertent mess left by an inexperienced chef making Kraft Dinner. But I spent some time splashing around with Aetheline, watched a catfish swim within two feet of me in the water and spotted a cormorant on a buoy, swam a bit with Pascal, pretended to be a “good pirate, who fights the bad pirates and takes their treasure and then gives it to poor people” with Pascal and Aetheline on the beach, and then came home to a dinner prepared by my 9 year old. Which is not a bad way to start the weekend. 🙂