Ladydale Diary
Saint Martin de Porres 2023
Almost two years ago, on the feast of the Epiphany in 2022, I embarked on the biggest fast of my life. Weighing myself at the end of the Twelve Days of festivities, I discovered that I was heavier than I’d ever been and decided that some drastic action was needed. I decided to follow a regimen of fasting from the day after Epiphany until Good Friday. Having travelled symbolically with the Wise Men from Bethlehem to Golgotha (the longest of Lents!), I had managed to lose 26lbs and was the lightest I’d been for about 20 years. More important, I managed to keep the weight off.
Then came the injury to my wrist, which kept me away from the gym, and two months of incessant travels. Knowing that I tend to get into shape when I’m at home and out of shape when I’m on the road, I suspected the worst when I weighed myself last Saturday, the morning after my return from Spain. I discovered that I’d put on 10lbs during the weeks of travel and decided, therefore, on another drastic course of action. This time I’m going on what I’m calling the Sir Gawain Fast, named in honour of the Arthurian knight who went on the quest to find the Green Knight. Sir Gawain departs on his quest on All Souls Day and arrives at the Green Knight’s castle on Christmas Eve. My own fasting regimen will follow the chronology of Sir Gawain’s quest. Commencing on All Soul’s Day, I aim to follow a strict fast in which I will not eat for 24 hours between the family meals in the evenings, though I intend to lighten up at the weekends (to keep myself sane!). My goal is to lose 18lbs which, if I’m successful, will take me to the weight that I was on my wedding day in April 2001. I’d be grateful for prayers for the virtue of temperance during the next seven weeks. Thank you!
What else is there to report this week?
First and foremost is the long exhalation of an ecstatic sigh of relief. Knowing that I’m only travelling once between now and the New Year, and that’s only a one-night stay in Dallas, has taken a great weight off my shoulders. I’m catching up with much work that has lain dormant, hibernating in my absence. The mountainous backlog has been largely climbed and I’m surveying the landscape of long-overdue projects on which I should now be able to embark. The view is great from up here!
I’ve returned to the gym this week after the longest protracted absence since I began regular gym attendance 26 years ago, when even I was young! It was good to be back but it’s tough to discover how much strength I’ve lost, especially in the left arm which was injured. Who knows how much of my former strength is attainable at my time of life. I suppose that time itself will tell as I get back to a regular workout routine.
It’s been a quiet week with respect to online teaching and radio interviews. The only online event was the recording of the FORMED Book Club yesterday, concluding our long discussion of Henri de Lubac’s masterful book, The Drama of Atheist Humanism.
This morning, I attended a meeting of the board of Rosary College, which we’re planning to start here in the upstate of South Carolina in the coming year. I’m sure that I will be reporting our progress in future diary entries.
And, of course, I’ve found time, as always, to record the three podcasts for the Inner Sanctum. Check them out if you have not already done so.
I’ll conclude with a few comments on my latest recreational reading. I finished reading Fiorella de Maria’s novel, We’ll Never Tell Them, on the return flight from Spain and wrote about it this week for the Imaginative Conservative. This has already been published and the link can be seen in the blog section of this site. Having finished this novel, I began reading a recent edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, published by the fine folks at Cluny Media. Hawthorne’s stories are creepy enough for Halloween so my reading has been somewhat seasonal in that respect. I’ve intermingled my reading of Hawthorne with the reading of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, which I own in a wonderful gift edition with wonderful illustrations by Gustave Doré.
I’ll conclude liturgically. On All Hallows, we went as a family to the noon Mass, but yesterday, All Souls, my family went to noon Mass without me because I felt the need to continue the ascent of the mountainous backlog. Instead, I went to a Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form yesterday evening, which was truly beautiful.
I’m leaving in ten minutes for the gym (again!) and thence to a chiropractor’s appointment to continue the healing process of my blissfully improving wrist.
May Our Lord bless each and every one of us!
