Jeff Vehige of Thursday Night Gumbo tagged me for the Six Quirks meme. It’s taken me a while to narrow the list down to just six because I am simply the most quirky person I’ve ever known. Familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps? Regardless, here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. I start everything possible on my right side. Walking starts with my right foot, chewing on the right side of my mouth, I line things up almost always from right to left. Suffice it to say baseball is nasty when it comes to starting habits like this.

2. I have a peculiar form of photographic memory. I can tell you exactly what a page on a book I’ve read looks like down to the minutest detail. Sometimes that’s how I’d pass tests in high school and college – I’d literally re-read the page in my mind.

3. I can never start a conversation; once someone gets it going I can talk for hours but I’m terrible at getting started. This makes RCIA sessions interesting to say the least.

4. Until I had a Sirius subscription I would never listen to any music when driving. I could drive for hours with only road noise and not be bothered in the slightest. Now I alternate between blessed silence and either EWTN or the Catholic Channel.

5. If I spend more than two days anywhere I pick up the local accent. Unintentionally. I can then pull it back even years later – I still whip out my West Virginia accent twenty years after I visited those beautiful hills.

6. I notice every last verbal peculiarity of anyone I talk to within minutes. It’s kind of annoying, even to me.

If you want to be tagged, you are. This has been out for a while so I’m not going to be tagging people who’ve already done it. Is that a cop out?

Zoiks, yes, I’ve been as scarce as hens’ teeth lately. Reasons? Yes. Good reasons? Debatable. Let’s just say there’s a reason I know Keith will make a good priest someday – if he can prod even me to action, imagine what he’ll do with an entire parish!

Fr. Daren Zehnle at Servant and Steward has tagged me with the Middle Name Meme. If both a priest and a seminarian want my answers, I guess I don’t have a choice but to answer. Who said Catholic Guilt was a thing of the past? (C’mon folks, that was a joke!)

The rules are fairly simple:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name.(If you don’t have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother’s maiden name).
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name.

My middle name is Peter. Yes, that means I go by my middle name not my first name. Heard about it at the beginning of every single year in school – I even tried to avoid it in college by not correcting any of the professors, until I started to get too busy/lazy/tired and signed all my papers with my middle name. As they would put it, “I am who I am”. But enough delaying.

P – I was convinced for a long time I would become a Priest. The Diocese was smart enough to make me slow down a lot, so it never happened. If someone says “Deacon” my answer is now “maybe, someday”. I’m no rushing headlong this time.
e – I have the habit of being positively effusive in praise and deference when talking or writing to any clergy. Probably to the point that they question whether I’m serious or just delirious.
t – I cringe whenever I hear someone describe the altar as a table. Sorry, they’re just … not … the … same. This is a meme though, so we haven’t the space for a full theological discussion. Moving on…
e – I came this // close to buying the Enchiridion Symbolorum even though I can’t read anywhere near enough Latin to have it be of much use. Partly because it would be an impetus to get moving on my Latin studies. And partly, sadly, just to have it.
r – I really, really want to start praying the Rosary every day. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, but I’ve never been organized enough to consistently carve twenty minutes out of my day and I constantly find myself at the end of the day having missed another opportunity. For good or bad, I consider it a black mark on my prayer life.

Since this meme has been around for a while, and just about everyone I know that might read this blog that has one of their own has answered the meme, consider yourself tagged. Keith, I’ll expect your answers in the combox since you forced me to do this. In between theology and philosophy courses, of course.

Yeeps, I’ve been tagged. Twice! Both Puff and Fr. Daren Zehnle tagged me for the “Why I love Jesus” meme. Apparently someone hung a bulls-eye on me and I didn’t notice. That’s okay, I was feeling a little un-loved after having gone un-tagged for so long anyway. So…the rules:

Those tagged will share 5 things they “love” about Jesus.
Those tagged will tag 5 other bloggers.
Those tagged will provide a link in the comments section here with their name so that others can read them.

Let me first admit that this is not something I’m usually very good at. Ask me an intellectual question, no problem, I’ll prattle on all day (or until I realize I’m getting the blank stare) but diving deep inside the real question, truly extrapolating the depth of love, well, being a “typical guy” that’s not so easy. But enough stalling…

1. Because He didn’t, hasn’t and won’t give up on me. Even when I did, have and will. I haven’t yet figured out if He’s pulling, dragging or pushing me along, but I’m certainly not doing this by myself.
2. Because He told us “good enough” isn’t good enough (think “adultery in the heart” and associated “but I say to you” teachings). My Dad always told me “if you’re going to do it, do it right or don’t do it at all” (yes, he has a little Yogi Berra in him). When I read those teachings, I knew this was real.
3. The fact that he works in apparent contradictions, fooling the wise and confusing the learned. It fits my otherwise contorted mind.
4. Because He taught me that real love is nothing like the pathetic, stupid pale imitation I learned about growing up – it is better, deeper, stronger, more painful, and more rewarding. For some reason I never really understood this until Deus Caritas Est but boy is it a life-changer.
5. Because I don’t understand His ways. And because that’s okay. You have no idea how liberating that is for someone like me.

I could go on, but rules are rules. I hereby tag Mike Aquilina (because I like to act like I know him, and he makes me look like I don’t like to think) of The Way of the Fathers, Aaron of Indolent Server (even if he is on partial hiatus), Bear-i-tone from The Spirit’s Sword (because turnabout is fair play), Leticia of causa nostrae laetitiae, and Diane of Te Deum laudamus. And anyone else that wants to play along – surely y’all can do better than I can.

Father Daren Zehnle, that is. This was actually quite an interesting idea – it’s kind of an un-meme. The directions:

1. Grab the book that is closest to you.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence.
5. Don’t search around for the coolest or most impressive book you have: use the one that really is closest to you.

My result: “And thus, a saint who is also a mathematician would rather deny that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles than deny the truth of faith.” — Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica 3 d 23 a 17), quoted in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Seeing the Form.

I’ve been tagged by Indolent Server for the Birthday Meme. It goes like this:

1: Go to wikipedia
2: Enter your birth month and day, but not year in the search box
3: List three events that happened on your birthday
4: List two important birthdays and one death
5: List one holiday or observance

Hmmm. My first meme tagging. I s’pose that means I should try to make this a good one.

Three events:

1. 1814 – Francis Scott Key writes The Star-Spangled Banner.
2. 1944 – United States Marines land on the island of Peleliu. (Given that my grandfather was in Guadalcanal around this time, these things have a special significance to me.)
3. 1964 – The opening of the third period of the Second Vatican Council.
4. 1965 – The opening of the fourth and final period of Second Vatican Council. (Okay, so I cheated.)

Two birthdays:

1. 1849 – Ivan Pavlov, Russian scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1936)
2. 1936 – Walter Koenig, American actor (I want to know anyone over the age of 16 who doesn’t know who he is.)

One death:

1. 258 – Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (Hmmm. That means his birthday into heaven is my birthday into the world. Perhaps I should learn more about him.)
2. (Extra credit) 891 – Pope Stephen V
3. (More extra credit) 1523 – Pope Adrian VI (b. 1459)

One celebration or holiday:

1. Roman Catholic Church – Triumph of the Cross (compare May 3, Finding of the Holy Cross).

I hereby tag … hmmm … Curt Jester, Dyspeptic Mutterings, and Dappled Things.