Moral Delimma

For his birthday, my son got to "redo" his room which hadn't been updated since he was 3. The jungle theme was getting a little old and we were both ready for a change.

So what's my moral delimma you might ask? Well, it's simple and yet so complicated.

We have a fairly old fashioned priest. I guess one of the old pre-Vatican II conventions was to have 'annual house blessings' in January. (Holy Family Sunday was designated "the" Sunday to do that.) This entails, blessed chalk being given to the parishioners and man of the house would write on the outside of their house above the front door the "Roman code" with the current new year. This is supposed to bless your house and keep it for another year....yada yada yada - You get the picture.

(Don't strike me down Lord for being somewhat irreverent and not going into the detail required to do this wonderfully holy pronouncement of our faith justice. But I had never heard of this until this priest revived this tradition, so I'm not as hip on the verbiage and full meaning of all the symbolism behind it.)
After some wild arm gesticulations in the sign of the cross and couple quick Hail Mary's, I'm back.

Anywhooo.....

So a couple years ago, they ran out of white chalk and so the priest blessed a bunch of colored chalk. When it came time to pick up our family's piece of chalk, C, the little "man of my house" decided that red chalk would be really cool. (I thought that would be ok since we have a red brick front.) Well, before I could even get my coat off after we got home, C had run into his room and in about 8 or 9 different places had wrote "BLESS" all over his walls with this holy chalk. (He was so excited about the whole concept and being entrusted with "the holy chalk", that he forgot that the priest said it was supposed to go outside and above the front door.)

So I've been in a moral quandry ever since.... How do you remove it without going to hell?

And so for the last 2 years "BLESS" has covered every wall in his room in several obvious locations, while I struggled with the holy ramifications. (By now the red has seeped into the wall paint and I have to deal with it because I need to prepare the walls to paint.) I finally figured out what to do. - Yes I had an epiphany of sorts! It was so simple and yet has elegant grace that matches the symbolism needed for this quandry.

You ask....How do you remove holy writing from your son's walls? With Holy Water of Course!!

Yes! I did. I got some holy water from church and used it to wash C's walls where the red blesses were written. It looks great and is still holier than thou's room.