Ten Paintings for any Catholic Household (and 5 Runners-Up)

Wondering what to get for your domestic church? Here are ten picks based on what families need most in our culture.

• Rembrandt - Head of a Young Jew
  A masculine, merciful Christ. Enough said.
  
  
• Caravaggio: Calling of St. Matthew
  My personal all-time favorite for its quiet illustration of the Incarnation, the role of God the Father and the Church in vocations, and the response of the imperfect one called.
  
  
• Bakhuizen: Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galiliee
  Great technique in an action scene that isn't overtly religious. (Subliminal messaging is real, so why not use it to make people better?)
  
  
• Murillo: Ascent to Calvary
  Picked for a beautiful and non-bloody illustration of the suffering of our Lord and the role of our Lady.
  
  
• Vermeer: The Geographer (nice when paired with The Astronomer)
  For households with young men (see below for the equivalent set of Vermeers for young women), or for anyone ready to think about heaven and earth.
  
  
• Zurbaran: St. Francis
  Picked for its depiction of prayer--not a boring activity, nor a human one.
  
  
• Wright of Derby: A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery
  Chosen for visual interest and juxtaposition of father figures and children, who are included in adult activities.
  
  
• Holbein: Sir Thomas More
  Patron of good fathers and families. Enough said!
  
  
• David: Death of Socrates
  Added for an injection of solid philosophy and natural virtue.
  
  
• Raphael: The Meeting between Pope Leo the Great and Attila the Hun
  Added for its ability to portray a brilliant piece of Western history (and an illustration of the role of the Church) with a lot of visual interest. Not an obviously religious piece, so great for public rooms.

Runners-up:

• Vermeer: Woman with a Water Jug OR Milkmaid
  Here's the young ladies' equivalent of the astronomer and the geographer. Vermeer's work with light and transparency, combined with his equally beautiful depiction of women of different personalities and realistic weights (i.e. body mass indices) can be helpful to young girls.
  
  
• Brueghel: Numbering at Bethlehem
  Another visually interesting scene also remarkable for a different style from the others; it's half Where's Waldo and half religious art--another perfect choice for your family room, especially at Christmas.
  
  
• Wright of Derby: Milton's Comus
  A more muted set of colors and a more mythical theme makes this one set apart and useful in an older child's room or a guestroom.
  
  
• El Greco: The Adoration of the Name of Jesus
  Couldn't not have an El Greco: the challenge he poses to prissy Romanticism fanatics is important in teaching members of a family that what they like isn't all that's good. Regardless of whether you choose El Greco or Picasso to make this point, it's a good one to make.
  
  
• Zurbaran: Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Rose
  Chosen for its subtle ability to represent Mary in a still life (teaching the power of art as it does so).

Do you use NFP? Be Pro-Environment...

I am at Billings teacher-in-training and I'm also being trained as a medical consultant for the Creighton model FertilityCare system. At both BOMA and CrMS trainings, I was told something terrifying: the charts are getting harder to read. They're getting weirder and more difficult to interpret. Dr. Hilgers himself said this multiple times, when speaking exclusively to the medical consultants-in-training.

Why is this? Apparently, it has to do with where women live. A FertilityCare Educator (teacher of teachers) explained that she was once supervising two new practitioners (Creighton teachers). One practitioner had clients with perfect charts. Every single chart looked like the textbook cycle! (The Educator almost didn't believe her.)

At the same time, the other practitioner had messy, long, confusing, patchy cycles that needed loads of help, management, and doctor help to understand. The clients of both practitioners were all around the same age and demographic (the typical NFP user). The only difference: the clean charts were from rural North Dakota, and the nasty charts were from New York City. The Educator attributed the difference to pollution.

This scared me.

There are certainly other factors at work in this anecdote. Even so, this needs more research, because this could mean the beginning of the end of mucus based fertility awareness methods. If people can't make valid observations and be confident in their own interpretations, how can they use their fertility to plan their family naturally? I feel like I'm putting on an aluminum foil hat, but it's the truth: if we can't rely on observations and sensations, we can't use methods like BOMA or CrMS.

Even if the health of our environment is only one factor in the health of women, I would feel more motivated to care for it to help families use NFP. Meanwhile, more research is needed to discover how much pollution contributes to cycle irregularity. (I've put it on my list of research projects to do.)

If you're a couple using NFP, you know it's not easy! If you think NFP is a good thing (and that it's already hard enough, thanks), you may want to be more earnest about good environmental stewardship.

More on Guessing and Pride

As a follow-up to the last post, I made a flowchart of all the little worries and calculations that can go on in a med student's head whenever someone asks a question. The more pride, the more anxiety, timidity, pompousness, envy, and regret. Right-click>open in new tab/window for full size.

Guessing and Pride

Vocabulary: Pimp (v.): to ask questions, often in front of other trainees or professionals, to assess a student's or resident's preparedness, medical knowledge, or professionalism

Third year medical students get used to getting pimped. We're advised (by survival guide books, by older students and residents, by faculty) to guess if we don't know an answer. This advice is logical. A third year knew even the smallest biochemical details of the pharmacology he's being asked about a mere six months ago, but after STEP 1 and two or three other rotations, he's refocused so many times that he can't exactly recall the correct answer. A third year sort of knows what to study for clerkships, and definitely never knows what to study for particular attendings. In general, a third year has just enough knowledge to know what's being asked, what the answer choices mean, and what he's missing to know the correct answer. (It's a very frustrating experience.)

We're advised to guess because we have enough knowledge to say something vaguely correct. I followed this advice, and had good and bad results.

I should have played the lottery during my pediatrics rotation. That's how lucky my guesses were. One outpatient physician with particularly pronounced ADHD forgot that he told me the most common cause of URI was "viral." When he asked me the question and I informed him that it was "viral," he was very pleased. I answered a few more softballs correctly, then he hit me with a hard one. "Why no fluoroquinolones for this patient?" he asked.

Fluoroquinolones! My M1 box of memories contained something about teeth...or was it cartilage? Tendons? Shoot! I had to pick between them. Because I remembered "cartilage" and "tendons," I eliminated "teeth," and then flipped a mental coin. "Cartilage malformations," I said. The whole internal answer-picking had taken only a fraction of a second.

"Correct!" the attending said. I got a fabulous evaluation.

Inpatient looked like it was going to be a different story. Our attending was demanding and taught in a more classical fashion: we presented patients in front of everyone on rounds, wrote detailed notes, and did long mock case workups. While I was in front of the room at the board (pen in hand) pretending to work up a child with renal failure, he told me a stool culture came back positive for Shigella.

"So," he said. "You wanna give him antibiotics?"

His CBC was terrible, he was febrile, he already had an IV in, and I very much wanted to give antibiotics. I remembered that Salmonella and Shigella had funny reactions to antibiotics...something about the child would feel better but there would still be bacteria in the stool...for even longer? But that was only for one of the two species (darn the person who named these two things so similarly!!)... Do I hazard a guess, or do I just give the antibiotic? I gambled.

"We could," I said, "but doesn't it prolong clearance in the stool...?" I trailed off gingerly, just in case I was wrong.

The attending raised his eyebrows.

"It does," he said, surprised. Apparently I'd skirted the trap he usually set for students. He then told a few case histories of patient's he'd treated. "So," he concluded, "if it's just going to be fluids, what do you want to use?"

"D5 half-normal," I replied. That wasn't a guess; that's what everyone in the unit was on. He gave me a mischievous look and pressed further.

"There is one case in which you would consider using quarter. Do you know who?"

Time for another guess. Babies are all water balloons at birth, so my brain spat out:

"The neonate?"

The attending clapped and grinned. "That's hot!" he said (which must have meant something different when he was a teenager). "Strong work." And I got another fabulous evaluation based on guessing.

But this has terrible effects, especially when we're asked to guess in front of other people. Those of us with the vice of pride (which is many doctors and student-doctors, and (so I'm told) a few other humans) do terribly in this environment. We have one of several reactions. It's a little complicated, so I made a flowchart.

I was typing this post while my attending was at a meeting; he came back and we had a mini lecture/pimping session on hydrocephalus. And I guessed some more. It will never end.

Daily Meditation with 70+ Hour Weeks

After I realized during my third year that I needed to prepare better for prayer, I started to create a list of verses that were easy to use and fruitful for meditation. I then expanded it to over 365 verses and sorted them so that I could use my imagination as meditation directs us.

I'm sharing the result on this blog because it is part of the experience of a Catholic medical student, and it might be helpful to some. This list is long, and it's got its own page: A Year of Meditation for Busy 21st Century Souls.

The list is still growing. The entirety of the life of Christ is present, but many Old Testament stories and many epistles are still untapped. It also needs the refinement and development that will come with use and time. But if you find it interesting to see how a 70+ hour work week can admit 30 minutes of daily meditation, take a look.