Last night I cooked dinner at the Catholic Worker here, and emerged from the kitchen to find a huge crowd assembled in the backyard for the meal. My heart filled with joy and I boomed out, “Happy Sunday!”
An Italian, in town for a conference, came up to me afterwards to remark that Buona Domenica is an established greeting, but that he’d never heard an English speaker say “Happy Sunday.” He said that Italians also say buona continuazione (happy continuance?), and buon proseguimento, which translates roughly as “happy follow-through” or “happy proceeding.” Also, they say buon lavorno for “happy work.”
I cooked pizza and white-bean-and-pasta soup. The pizza recipe is mostly from Cooks Illustrated. The soup is a white-bean-and-roasted-garlic soup from Isa Chandra Moskowitz, with a bag of pasta thrown in.
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This morning I attended the beginning of a Mennonite-Catholic theological conference at Notre Dame. It centers on the document Called Together To Be Peacemakers. This document does a good job comparing and contrasting the two faiths; I recommend it. The proceedings of the conference will soon be available at the conference website.
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You ever have one of those days when you’re hungover and sweeping out a soup kitchen, and feel like life is a burden, and then a ragged, weathered man sits down at the piano and riffs on “Let It Be” for 20 minutes, and the burden floats away? I love that.