It’s the feast of St. Therese, and I have a serious post coming up some other time. Meanwhile, let us observe that hidden in the word Piety is pie. And when someone says pie, that means chocolate and coffee.
We can thus remember that today is the Little Flower’s feast day because it is also the first day of Fall, if by “Fall” what you mean is “when the summer shipping charges at Equal Exchange no longer apply.”
We’d been waiting with Therese-like restraint to reorder coffee — it had gotten to the point that some of us were drinking tea for goodness sake — until we could throw a fresh box of chocolate minis into the order. Is free shipping worth the wait? I know not. But I’ll take my self-mortification where I can, because there’s not a whole lot of it to be had when you’re on the Miniscule Way.
Catholic Relief Services has links to other Fair Trade suppliers here, and I’ll note from that collection that Larry’s Beans Cowboy Blend is our house regular-coffee of choice. Because this is a Christian household, even if you like weak coffee we can still be friends.
Not on the CRS list is Mystic Monk, which people tell me they like, and it’s run by real live Carmelite monks, so you practically must drop by your local Catholic bookstore and pick up an emergency re-supply in observance of the feast.
Okay, no, that’s not why I’m going to said bookstore today. It’s to pick up the 2015 edition of my all time favorite paper calendar, because when I try to be digital, bad things happen.
I like it because:
- Week-at-a-glance, the format my brain rebels against least.
- Handy information like HDO’s and When does Lent begin again? right there, which is ideal if you have to do any planning at all for a Catholic organization, or a Catholic family.
- The Angelus on the inside cover. I think I’m the last Catholic in the universe who still doesn’t have the Angelus memorized, but TAN’s got my back on that.
- If you’re sitting at a meeting and you’re bored, you can flip through the saint’s biographies (one a week), and it looks like you’re just checking your calendar because you have important plans for the group. It’s like sinning and being pious at the same time.
- When you show up someplace outside the Catholic ghetto and slap this baby on the table, everyone immediately knows you’re One of Those Catholics. Then they leave you alone. If your goal is to be a Hermit in the World, this book is your tool to make that happen.
Happy Feast Day!
Cover image courtesy of TAN/St. Benedict Press.
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