Sunday Morning Musings

It's a quiet overcast Sunday morning - my favorite kind. Sunshine isn't intruding into my thoughts and I am enjoying the Innocence Mission playing in the background, while some blueberry greek yogurt muffins are baking away. Dog is walked and fed, and lying contentedly on tile floors, Mr. Oram is playing Mass, and I am here, in my apron and cap, musing.

You can't tell, but it's raining here - this is the nature preserve at the end of our road. 

I wanted to blog about the Republican VP pick, Paul Ryan. I thought about talking more about my pregnancy and how much I look forward to holding my child. I even considered discussing St. Clare, whose feast day was yesterday and whom I love. And I found myself continually asking, do those things go with the "theme" of my blog?

Themes in blogs are a big deal. There are articles written with tips about how to be a successful blogger, a successful Catholic blogger, a successful branded person. They all talk about a theme. I resist this theme-insistence, that pushes: what is my thing? What's my schtick? Am I going to 'just' blog about family life - marriage, pregnancy, kids, housekeeping? Will I include politics? Theology?

I want the theme of this blog to be the life of an intellectual Catholic woman. At certain times in my life, thoughts of wider world problems might consume me - the rampant anti-Christian and anti-Semitic sentiment that runs throughout popular culture, poverty, the debt crisis. And then with the new baby, I'm sure my focus will shift - the miracle of life, the joy of a child, the wilderness that first time motherhood must feel like.

I also would like to blog about the beauty of Anthropologie visual merchandise displays. Gorg.

This is what real life consists of for me, a modern Catholic American woman: highly educated, yet incredibly maternal, fiercely interested in the world but always wanting to hide out in some cloister, wanting to chat with you all about everything under the sun and still "ponder these things in [my] heart" like the Blessed Mother.

So I'll just make that my theme.