About 15 years ago, I purchased a tape set that consisted of recordings of 4 different talks that were given by a Catholic priest on the topic of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. During one of the talks, the priest explained a theory that he had heard from his brother-in-law about the different tendencies men and women are born with. His brother-in-law was a psychiatrist and a devout Catholic who had been counseling married couples for over 25 years.
A few months ago in an article entitled Ambushed By My Cousin, I told you about how I promised a cousin of mine that I would write about what I thought parents should be doing to raise their boys into decent, honorable, and respectable Catholic men. In the Ambushed article, I talked about the men on both sides of my parents’ families – the Williams men and the LaHood men.
I have a rule that my teenage daughters are not allowed to download any songs from the Internet to play on their iPods until I’ve given my approval. Do you know what I call the wires that come out of an iPod and connect onto the small earphones that go into a teenager’s ears? Pipelines. Here’s what travels through those pipelines: (1) sewage that is pumped directly into our children’s brains (and imaginations) that will eventually corrupt the way they think and behave; or (2) meaningful music that can help our children to ponder and appreciate some of the beautiful things in life.
Last week, after I published my article on The Two Greatest Desires, I happened to run into one of my cousins. When I saw her walking toward me, I noticed the expression on her face. It was one of those determined looks, a look that alerted me that she was about to give me a lecture. How was it that was I able to read the look on her face? She raised her family in the same neighborhood I grew up in, and during that time I had several opportunities to see the same look on her face immediately prior to her delivering a lecture to me or someone else in the neighborhood.