That Hoits!

My brother-in-law, who is a landscaper, stopped by the house yesterday and after surveying the garden asked if my tomato plants, which look pale and sickly unto death, were "volunteers".

 posted by TSO @ 10:06 
 
May 31, 2005   


 
Packing Heat

All booklovers know the great drama that is packing books for a trip. Knowing which to choose is an art and not a science since it requires an openness to serendipty and grace that is somewhat beyond our control. Nevertheless, I try to approach it with some organization.

The "four food groups" of my vactional reading include: fiction, history/biography, spiritual, and baseball. Or, to switch metaphors and stretch the analogy, they are the four major conferences whose champions will receive an automatic bid into my suitcase. 

The rulz say: I will take the top three finishers in each conference except baseball, which is given only one automatic bid. All other books have to precariously rely on an "at large" bid, which is dependent in part by their physical size, their suitability for beach reading, and of course desirability.

I already know some of the automatic bid winners:

Fiction: "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens; "Sanibel Flats" by Randy Wayne White
History/Bio: Rothman's "Early Bird", Douthat's "Privilege"
Spritual: Nash's "Worthy is the Lamb", "Blessed Margaret of Castello" by Fr. Bonniwell 
Baseball: "The Old Ball Game" by Frank Deford. (There is usually very little competition in this category; only Jack McKeon's "I'm Just Getting Started" this time.) 

Here are just a few of the hundred books who are battling for either third place in one of the conferences or for an at large bid:



Kevin O'Hara's "Last of the Donkey Pilgrims"

Joseph Pearce's "Literary Giants, Literary Catholics"

Waugh's "Helena"

WFB's "Miles Gone By"

Kreeft's "The God Who Loves You"

Naipul's "The Writer and the World"

Russell Kirk's "Ancestral Shadows"

The total number of at large bids varies depending on length of vacation, size of suitcase, and size of the "at large" books. Just going on the trip doesn't guarantee anything of course. Of all those receiving suitcase bids typically only three will become favorites during the week and one actually finished. Last year's ultimate winner was Joseph Pearce's biography of Oscar Wilde, which wasn't suprising in hindsight given that it contained a mix of poetry, history and spirituality - nourishing enough to contain all the major food groups except baseball. This is akin to a team having a great guy in the middle, an excellent ballhandler and a great outside shooter.

 posted by TSO @ 07:07 
 
 


 
Two Perspectives

When I was perusing the angst of the progressive bloggers post Benedict's selection one stood out. She said that the election of the pope simply doesn't matter to her, that her faith isn't in the pope and will continue unaffected by whoever sits in that chair. And I wasn't sure whether this was the best or worse response from the liberal bloggers.

But I know there is a humility and a becoming littleness in what Scott Hahn, who would seem far less in need of a spiritual father than most of us, recently wrote in his newsletter:

I find it hard to describe how much I depend on the spiritual fatherhood of the pope. We are one family as Catholics. And for a couple of weeks, I know you, too, felt like orphans. Then suddenly, a new Holy Father was raised up for us. We have a pope!

And what a pope we have. Benedict XVI is one of the world's most profound biblical theologians. I don't think any pope since Peter has equaled Benedict in his knowledge of the Old Testament. He writes like a man who works out his theology on his knees in prayer. 


 posted by TSO @ 17:29 
 
May 29, 2005   


 
The 5-Hour Camping Trip

My in-laws like to camp and head out every Memorial Day weekend from Friday morn to Monday afternoon. My wife and I generally join them for a 30 hour stint but it was shrunk to five this year on account of rain and fatigue and lack of interest. I can’t say I’m too upset although I do miss the post-camping euphoria. Camping, like swimming the English Channel, may not be enjoyable at the time but afterwards you feel whistle-clean. 

But five hours lends no sense of accomplishment and instead the opposite. On the way home my brother-in-law’s voice on the cell sounds crestfallen. He is coming up Sunday morning and we are going home Saturday night and all we can say in our defense is that we are duds. His disappointment is oddly touching and I consider the possibility of making the 90-minute trip back to the camp the next day until sanity is restored. 

We got there about five on Saturday and it’s pouring down rain. We make for the camper and lay down, lethargic from the drive. In my drowse I hear ominous words like “house boat”, “Lake Cumberland” and “rent” and I lie back down. The sound of the rain against the canvas top is comforting and relaxing. 

The rain eventually quits and we’re back out doing what camping is all about: preparing the next meal. It’s discovered we’re low on firewood so four of us head back to Aldephia, Ohio population 400. The trip takes about 45 minutes and then we can begin cooking in earnest. There are pork chops, steak, chicken, brats, mets, hamburgers and hot dogs. Paradise for the Atkins dieter. 

By 8:30pm we’re sitting down to dinner and getting down to some serious eating. An hour later we’re staring catatonically at the fire, giving Gov. Bob Tax hell. We try to solve the school funding crisis. By 10 we’re back on the road, and by midnight back in our own bed.

 posted by TSO @ 17:12 
 
 


 
Of Books

NR’s Nordlinger quotes someone who quotes ancient Chinese scholar Yuan Mei that sums up how I feel some days: "The moment I awake, I long for my library and bound towards it, swift as a thirsty cat." 

The books on my shelves stand like a collection of future promises not unlike the gleam of whiskey bottles behind a bar. I wake with a thirst for a specific book, apropos of nothing. “Worthy is the Lamb” is something that has recently been the target of that thirst. But it could just as easily be Mark Falanga’s “The Suburban You” or Frank Deford’s bio of John McGraw & Christy Matthewson.

As with NFP, a few days away makes the heart go fonder. There's nothing better than sitting in the recliner feeding the mind after having exhausted the body with exercise.

 posted by TSO @ 16:48 
 
 


 
The Bane of Spring, Summer, Fall and Early Winter

I see the inevitability in sounding like a curmudgeon. But if there's one thing that really grates on me about spring is that horrible tune the Ice Cream man plays as he makes his rounds. 

And makes his rounds he does. When I was a kid we got maybe five visits a summer if we were lucky. Now the truck comes around pert near every other day. Doesn't matter that it's April and 50 degrees with a 30 degree wind chill, there's the ice cream man playing that maddening tune at the decibel level of the average jackhammer. You can hear him three neighborhoods over.

This can be explained by a few trends. First, we've become much more of a service industry, and mr. ice cream is yet another service. Second, parents can no longer direct the word "no" to children and still remain on speaking terms with them. Third, ice cream isn't just for breakfast anymore - it's become recognized as one of the four major food groups. That must be true since there are three ice cream joints within a mile of my home and someone must be buying.

 posted by TSO @ 16:41 
 
 


 
Slippery Slope?

Has the slippery slope come to Jeff Culbreath's blog? He who has trod the narrow way for so long has at last succumbed to a book quiz.

This prompted our crack research team to do some digging, suspecting that Jeff had reneged on a promise. Oh me of little faith. This has turned out to be false, as he'd never promised us a rose garden or to avoid a book meme. And a quick check confirmed that I have been mostly successful in keeping my promises too.

 posted by TSO @ 14:55 
 
 


 
From same NR article:

[Flannery O'Connor] frequently turned that unflinching gaze of hers upon herself. More often than not, the characters in O’Connor’s stories who are the most obtuse, the most prideful, are the isolated would-be intellectuals who believe their genius puts them beyond good and evil...what about Joy in “Good Country People”? Stuck in a rural home with a narrow-minded, pragmatic mother, Joy decides to withdraw into her own arcane studies (which sound a lot like deconstruction theory), taking the harsh name of "Hulga" to complete her self-reinvention. When a seemingly naïve and gawky young man comes to her door with bibles for sale, she thinks she can see through him. But she has another thing coming — experiencing a reversal that strikes down her pride. Did the writer, who chose to go by her unusual middle name, rather than her given name of Mary, see something of herself in the lonely, angry Hulga?


 posted by TSO @ 14:37 
 
 


 
Wolfe asks: "Do good people make good art?" 

Interesting NR column on whether creativity is a virtue:

So where does this leave us? If creativity seems unequally distributed, can bring about destruction, does not intrinsically aid in the moral perfection of the creative individual, and has been tainted by the Romantic cult of genius, it doesn’t seem to warrant consideration as a virtue.

And yet there is something in most of us that accords a high measure of dignity and worth to the creative impulse. Nearly all the world’s religions are grounded in creation stories that also ennoble human beings as agents who perpetuate the divine act of creation by their own actions. In turn, each human action partakes in some measure of the supernatural powers of the creator.

On a personal level, we witness and are enriched by the grandeur of creativity when we see it embodied in art or engineering or statecraft. We sense that creativity lies at the heart of what makes us human, and that without it our lives would be spiritually and materially impoverished.

The world’s great religious traditions reinforce this intuition...While creativity itself may not be a virtue, then, I would argue that the truest, most unsentimental thing we can say about creativity is that it is a constant invitation to virtue...


 posted by TSO @ 08:30 
 
May 28, 2005   


 
As the Solemnity of Corpus Christi Nears

...An excellent reminder on adoration of the Holy Eucharist.

 posted by TSO @ 07:20 
 
 


 
Up Arrow for The Word Among Us

Like Julie of Happy Catholic, I used to be very content with my Magnificat subscription. And I do miss it from time to time. But like her I switched to the meditations in The Word Among Us. I appreciate the greater simplicity and practicality and most of all the tone of encouragement.

A recent example:

We’ve all read fairy tales about a baker or a woodsman or a rash widow who was granted three wishes and squandered all three of them on silly things. And we’ve all thought: “My first wish would be to have an unlimited number of wishes!” This is the kind of mentality that lay behind James’ and John’s request: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” (Mark 10:35). It’s as if they were treating Jesus like an all-purpose appliance existing only to do their bidding. When challenged by Jesus, they quickly claimed to be willing to pay the price for the honor they sought. But it’s clear that they had no idea what “drinking the cup” entailed.

How easy it can be to approach Jesus in the Eucharist in the same way—with a wish list of sins we want forgiven and favors we want granted, but with no sense of being connected to him. On one level, such an approach appears to honor him as sovereign Lord. But if we really want to know how to come to Jesus at Mass, perhaps we should ask how he approaches us.

“The Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)...Instead of coming to the Eucharist with a list of petitions or asking Jesus to fill you with blessings, try this approach every now and then. Try offering to Jesus everything you have: the work you did last week, your talents, and your accomplishments. Come to him the way he comes to us—as one who gives instead of one who receives. You’ll be amazed at how much heavenly grace will flow into your life. Just like Jesus, you will be lifted up by your Father in heaven.


 posted by TSO @ 12:43 
 
May 27, 2005   


 
After all these years KTC comes out of retirement to play... 

...Alphabet Meme! 

(because you can take the blogger out of the ham, but not the ham out of the blogger!)

Age = a scant 5 years away from AARP eligibility!
Booze = Carrabba-rita (big Margarita—plenty of salt—with a surprising splash of Amaretto)
Career = Yes: homemaker and salon-hostess
Dad’s Name = Bill
Essential Party Items = cigars
Favorite Song at the Moment = “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow”
Hometown = West Chester, PA
Instrument = guitar
Jam = Blackberry, seedless raspberry; Jelly = guava
Kids = 5, plus my husband’s 22-y-o cousin who resides with us
Living arrangement = house
Mom’s name = Cass
Names of Best Friends = Lynne, Kat, Valerie, Robin, Jane
Overnight Hospital Stays = 9
Phobias = husband barging in and announcing “Time to Clean” before I’ve had three days to prepare mentally
Quote I like = “It is idle to play the lyre for an ass” (my man Jerome)
Relationship that lasted longest = marriage: 20 years; friendship with Lynne: since 7th grade (33 years)
Siblings = nope
Vegetable I love = Fried OKRA! 
XRays = teeth, lungs, spine
Yummy Food I Make = My Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce; Special Recipe Fried Okra; Enchilada Casserole; Pulled Pork BBQ
Zodiac Sign = Sagittarius (just like Anna Nicole Smith)


 posted by TSO @ 11:29 
 
 


 
Alphabet Meme

A is for Age - "old enough to know better but still too young to care" (song lyric I like)
B is for Booze - yes
C is for Career - yes
D is for Dad’s name - Mark
E is for Essential items to bring to a party - Guinness
F is for Favorite song at the moment - Baby Girl, Sugarland
H is for Hometown - small town in southwestern Ohio
I is for Instrument you play - sousaphone
J is for Jam or Jelly you like - blueberry
K is for Kids - One
L is for Living arrangement - a house
M is for Mom’s name - Mary
N is for Names of best friends - Dave, Jeff
O is for overnight hospital stays - yes
P is for Phobias - hard work
Q is for Quote you like - "He jests at scars that never felt a wound." - Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet"
R is for Relationship that lasted longest - Other than siblings, Hambone probably
S is for Siblings - one sister and one brother
V if for Vegetable you love - brussel sprouts
W is for Worst trait - laziness
X - is for XRays you’ve had - teeth
Y is for Yummy food you make - O'Garlic poor boys
Z is for Zodiac sign - Cancer

 posted by TSO @ 08:17 
 
 


 
Comments on Commenters from a Commentless Blog

I'm lately fascinated by the commenters any given blog attracts. Over a period of time, does this say something about the blogger or do certain commenters create a climate independent of the blog? Do bad commenters drive out good in a sort of Gresham's Law? 

The vast majority of blogs get too few comments to have any climate at all. But my impression (no empirical work has been done in service of this post) is that Mark Shea's blog has, or had, a higher quotient of the idiotic and mean-spirited than Amy Welborn's. 

Camassia's are polite and intellectual; Tom of Disputations are impolite and intellectual. Tom's commenters are probably the most annoying per capita. Two frequent commenters bring hobbyhorses: one is fixated on money and another on just war theory. It's oddly fascinating to see how the latter will slip in a reference to war in a completely foreign context. (Well, I generally skip his comments so it must not be that fascinating.) If bad commenters are temptations to crossness, then there are those who flee from temptation (me, Eve T., & Mark of Minute Particulars ?) and those who embrace them as temptations to be overcome.

I'm not holding my comments as any sort of standard, especially compared to someone like Neil who modestly quotes only other people's words. There is something oddly inspiring in this, a tacit recognition that what we say has usually already been said better by someone in the past. There's an "I must decrease, You must increase" flavor. He must have a large library and a nose for good quotes.

 posted by TSO @ 06:58 
 
 


 
Bingo Redux

For an introvert like me, volunteering at bingo is far too stimulating. I come home hyper and can't get to sleep and then wake up early to make up for it. 

Perhaps writing about it will help leave it behind. 

First there's the gentle, befuddled look of the bingo caller, who I have the sneaking suspicion might be a saint. I first noticed him at Mass where he sings in the choir. He sings with the abandon reserved for the drunken or the innocent. I also saw him singing Handel's Messiah at an annual city event held at a local Lutheran church. And he goes to Eucharistic Adoration and adores. And he has a smile for everyone, an equal-opportunity smile. But I can't know his soul so it's just a hunch. And, as most really decent people, he gets abused. You're supposed to have to call for only two of the four hours since it gets tiring, but he calls for the whole time because no one else is trained or wants to. Apparently no one wants to be a callers since they get heckled and require thick skin.

I make my rounds selling instant winner tickets. And since I work in an office that is as homogeneous as it gets (mostly white males, mid 30s, running the gamut from middle class to upper middle class), it's a little slice of cinema veritas here at bingo. 

Most interesting was the attractive woman in her early 30s sitting in the back. She was showing acres of leg and thigh but there was something just a bit off. I couldn't quite figure it. Was it her hairline? Her facial features? Just something. Now since a full circuit takes only a minute and since bingo lasts forever, this means I'm making more circuits than Michael Jackson has problems. And each time it dawns on me, to my horror and deepening curiosity, that she is...or was... a he. A transsexual. The deeper-than-normal voice eventually confirmed my suspicions. 

Then there was the guy who was just amazingly large. Not only obese, but just plain big. His shoulders and back were just explosively large is the only way I can say it. His wife was anorexic. Must've weighed 80 lbs. The mind reels at a couple so physically mismatched. They looked vaguely familiar until it finally dawned on me -- they were the husband & wife from The Incredibles!

A blonde, well-dressed professional woman sat near the entrance. That alone was intriguing since well-dressed professionals stick out here like Fenians singing "God Save the Queen". She bought tickets from me as inobtrusively as possible. No wasted motion. I wonder what brought her here. 

The crowd was younger this time. There were several very attractive, well-endowed women. Alas. And here I'd thought bingo was God's gift to the lustful Christian. 

It was painful to hear the numbers get called and have to sit on the (obvious) line "you sunk my battleship!". I finally used it on a co-worker, since that's what co-workers are for. I think he smiled.

 posted by TSO @ 06:44 
 
 


 
Pharmaceutical Ethics

Heard a talk show host castigating a pharmacist for wanting the right not to have to fill a prescription for what I assume was the morning after pill. The talk show host, Mike McConnell, says if he doesn't want to fill a legal prescription then he should sacrifice his job. He said early Christians died for the faith and now they won't sacrifice their job. The pharmacist replied that doctors don't have to perform abortions but McConnell said that that's because their job allows specialization while a pharmacist job does not. The pharmacist said that when he signed up he wasn't signing up to fill death pills - i.e. they changed the rules. McConnell countered that perhaps there were early Christians became Christians before the rules changed on whether you could be a Christian.

It's an interesting subject. Obviously a pharmacy owner doesn't have to stock what it doesn't want to stock and the government shouldn't be allowed to force them. But should that worker's right be respected and keep that particular job? I'm sympathetic to McConnell's point. Yet in our age we seem to accommodate a person's conscience as long as they're not a Christian. What the pharmacists need to do is just find a American Indian who can't fill a certain prescription and let them represent them in court. Teehee.
___

From Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus:

Authentic democracy is possible only in a state ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person. It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the “subjectivity” of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.
Update: Looks like Amy and her posse have already covered this topic in depth.

 posted by TSO @ 13:13 
 
May 26, 2005   


 
St. Philip Neri Feast

Here's a saint whose example is like medicine to our age - he was cheerful without artifice, joyous and humorous. Humble enough to be able to identify with the ultimate sinner - Judas. He said that serving the sick was the quickest path to saintliness.

Here's hoping that Donna Marie Lewis will soon have her annual philip-bration on her blog...

 posted by TSO @ 12:38 
 
 


 
Speaking of Proof that Life is Unfair...

...Bill Luse hasn't blogged for ages.

 posted by TSO @ 12:37 
 
 


 
Rambling Thoughts

The seasons seem temporal as we get older. Winter and summer seemed experientially more or less permanent fixtures when I was young. Perhaps there was less reason to gather up and treasure that first warm day in May, knowing there was plenty more where that came from...Spring has grown on me. When I was younger it seemed a pale imitation of summer, a sort of cooled over Episcopalian service compared to the majesty of summer's Tridentine rite. But now I'm less choosy. Perhaps part of my new appreciation is that when I was ten percent body fat, seventy degrees was borderline jacket weather. Now, at twenty percent body fat it feels positively balmy. And spring has many a fine 70-degree day. 

* * * 

I was driving out to the "sticks" Sunday, aka out to a rural area, when I happened across a tiny brick church. It was around 11:30am and they were still having their service and I'm a sucker for little country churches. I parked the car & poked my head in the window and saw maybe fifteen in attendence and a large heavyset man in a tan 3-piece suit energetically pounding on the table. I wanted to go in but decided there was no way I could do so unobtrusively. Movies can seem so contrived to me. Bingo and rural church services have the scent of the unfamiliar about them without contrivance.

* * *

Proof #371,212 that life is unfair: Steven Riddle got to sit in Sophia Loren's lap.
Proof #371,213: he was six.

* * * 

Sounds like spam but it's not: ball for life. Seriously, it goes to a fabulous cause - Fr. Groeschel's Good Counsel ministry for unwed mothers.

* * *

I'm pretty sure I'm the only man in the country with a Warren Carroll volume bookmarked by an evangelical (Vineyard) women's retreat (bookmark courtesy my wife).

 posted by TSO @ 08:08 
 
 


 
Snort Not Lest Ye Be Snorted

The snorter in the next cubical reminds me of St. Therese. Not because he wears a habit or is a Doctor of the Church but because St. Therese taught suffering small annoyances with patience is meritorious. And surely they don't get any smaller than this. So I've tried to look at it in St. Therese's light. Only once have I radically failed; a (nearly) involuntary snort of my own when once he walked by my cubical as he engaged in a honker. Humor seems a great aid in dealing with minor anoyances although full disclosure requires that I don't recall reading that in "Story of a Soul"...

To Tune "Killing Me Softly"

Snorting quite loudly through his nasal cavity
Singeing my ears with his sounds
Driving me crazy with his song
Driving me crazy with his song
At irregular intervals, he snorts loud
Driving me crazy
...with his song.

I heard this is quite common
in his native country
And so I began to see it
as my problem after awhile.
I prayed that he would finish
but he just kept right on...
REF: Driving me crazy...

He snorted as if he knew this 
would cause me dark despair
And then he snorted right near me
as if I wasn't there
But he was there, this stranger,
snorting clear and loud
Snorting quite loudly while wearing earphones,
Singeing my ears with his song,
REF: Driving me crazy...


 posted by TSO @ 07:43 
 
 


 
Ha!

From National Review:



" 'Do what you love, and the money 
will follow' sure doesn't seem to work 
very well with drinking."


 posted by TSO @ 14:42 
 
May 25, 2005   


 
Vintage Post Sale

 

In order to cut costs without sacrificing quality, I've decided to inaugurate a new feature here at VMPDS. "Vintage Post Sale" will reprint an oldie but goodie free of charge. Here's a post originally aired back in September 2003:

Kathy Defends an Ass! ...film at 11

"The only thing I would quibble with (both then and now) is the defamation of the character of Balaam's ass. Balaam's ass was the instrument of the Lord; her speech was supernaturally produced!"

Other colorful KTC quotes include:

"I did inform one young lady that she was on 'the bullet train to hell'".

"In my little sphere, though, I'm not asked so much to give advice; rather, I end up hearing presentations of the cultural values of my seeker friends (and they ARE friends, not merely curiosities or my version of 'the white man's burden')." 
___

"...thyme’s always short." - Gregg the Obscure


 posted by TSO @ 14:08 
 
 


 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Criminy. I turn my back for five minutes, and the place fills up with Protestants explaining Catholic theology to each other. Led by that most cautious and tentative dialectician, Rob. - Tom of Disputations

Then I had a sudden inkling of the dorkiest thing I've ever done. Tom and the girls died laughing in agreement so it must be true. Ready? You're not gonna like it ...It is Happy Catholic....They find out how much time I spend blogging or reading blogs ..... hmmm, yeah, I'm going with this blog as my dorkiest moment ... which means I live my life in dorkiness ... as Queen Blogging Dork! Bow down before your queen! ha! -birthday girl Julie of "Happy Catholic"; I can relate.

I was able (thanks to the miracle of cable television and being home sick as a dog) to watch hour upon hour of Catholic pageantry and punditry while simultaneously being fed even more information and commentary on the Web. Meanwhile, oh glorious day, the new Pope has been thoughtful and challenging and ooh, oh so cutely bookish! Heady stuff. The problem is: where does the joy of unified worship of God end and mere fannish enthusiasm begin? Can I keep my joy without becoming embarrassing or turning the culture of the Church into my idol in both senses? As usual, the test and the corrective action is the same: I have to turn my mind toward Christ, and Him crucified. - Banshee of Suburban Banshee

Catholic Utopia is appealing and utterly unrealizable. The only groups that have really succeeded at such a venture are the Amish and the Mennonites and their faith builds in a community structure that most Catholics--consciously or unconsciously--eschew. - Steven Riddle

Unlike the other books on this list, I’ve only read it once, but it was the right book at the right time. Those of us who are just plain complicated like me rather than complex like Aquinas sometimes have to go back to the source and learn to trust God like a little child, an art that the Little Flower raised to a level of complex beauty that would have made Aquinas smile in wonder. - on St. Therese's "Story of a Soul" by Matthew of "Holy Whapping"

Rejoice with a great glad noise, without shame,
Man alone pines, mourns, walks as though he's lame,
Til one Man returns to teach him to sing. 
-excerpt of Steven Riddle poem

How does Ms. Fonda approach The Word? "For me," she says, "it's metaphor." What does she mean? If something is metaphorical, it means that it isn't to be taken literally. When the movie Barbarella came out in 1968, starring Jane Fonda, guys used to say that she was "hot." They didn't mean that her body temperature was alarmingly elevated. "Hot" was simply a metaphor for the elevated temperatures of their own libidos, which is to say: she looked sexy. What does Ms. Fonda mean by calling The Word "metaphor"? Does she mean that the Incarnation, Resurrection, Ascension, Redemption, and promise of Eternal Life are not to be taken literally? - Dr. Blosser of "Musings of a Pertinacious Papist"

Santorum told National Catholic Reporter, a U.S.-based weekly, that he considered George W. Bush, a Methodist, to be "the first Catholic president of the United States."... Santorum explained his claim to me: "What I meant was if you look at the two major issues of the church, it's sanctity of life, sanctity of marriage and the family -- and third is care for the poor. And you have a president who is consistent with Catholic social teaching on all of these issues." - NY Times piece on Sen. Rick Santorum

The Anti Christian Liberties Union - title of Karen Hall post on "Some Have Hats", describing the ACLU mandate

 posted by TSO @ 09:07 
 
 


 
Don Marquis Poem

We are ourselves, and not ourselves . . .
For ever thwarting pride and will
Some forebear’s passion leaps from death
To claim a vital license still.

Ancestral lusts that slew and died,
Resurgent, swell each living vein;
Old doubts and faiths, new panoplied,
Dispute the mastery of the brain.
- Excerpt of "Selves" by Don Marquis

 posted by TSO @ 08:59 
 
 


 
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Well there was a standoff and the Republicans blinked. As Pat Buchanan said on Imus today, over the past few decades twelve Supreme Court justices have been nominated, ten by Republican presidents. And four of the ten were duds. Souter, Blackman, John Paul Stevens & one other, whose name thankfully escapes. And three are swing voters. Only three conservatives. It's no wonder the judiciary has become a law-making entity.

It's hard to support the abuse of the filibuster for the purpose of further abusing the judiciary. The Democrats used the filibuster like Mayberry's Otis Campbell hit the bottle. It's the oldest story in the book: abuse a privilege, lose a privilege. Besides, the filibuster ain't what it used to be in Mr. Smith's day. Now you can phone it in.

McCain, God love him, I've always wanted to vote for him. I admire the heck out of him. But I can't. He's out for me in '08. (I'm sure he's quaking.) And et tu Sen. Mike Dewine? What are you standing up there with Olympia Snow & Sen. Collins & Sen. Warner? Birds of a feather? Have you gone Washington on us?

 posted by TSO @ 18:38 
 
May 24, 2005   


 
Rest Homes

One of the things I wish I'd read more about on blogs is a discussion on how to treat the elderly with care and respect and when the use of a rest home is necessary.

A couple decades ago they were to be devoutly avoided, thought to be houses of abuse. My grandmother recently went to one and I was surprised by the quality of the rooms and beauty of the building. The workers there are by all accounts wonderful. But she obviously misses her house and I wonder if there couldn't have been another way.

My wife says, bravely, that our parents will never go to a rest home because we will take them in. Which is only right, as there is a good symmetry to it as in the saying, "we'll change our parent's diapers as they changed ours". But speaking for self, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer a stranger do that than a loved one. Is it in some way easier to be vulnerable in front of a stranger than a loved one? Or is that squeamishness a part of the larger problem of a culture which likes to farm off to strangers less than pleasant tasks?

I guess an obvious case of the need for a rest home is when it is too dangerous to leave them alone for even short periods of time, which seems to be the case with my grandmother. The around-the-clock availability of a nurse on call is comfort. But rest homes feel unnatural, a kind of re-institutionalization.

 posted by TSO @ 15:46 
 
 


 
That's Gotta Hurt!

Oh the slings and arrows of outrageous fate. Ham o' Bone just called to say that he checked the latest Variety and lo & behold Sly Stallone is directing a film about Edgar Allen Poe, who happened to be the subject of Bone's latest screenplay. Obviously Stallone has been monitoring our emails and/or conversations. In fact he may be reading th- [I will encrypt]:

Fejm33mkajb7  372mccmb7 ddjf7cm321 2jm   djxu722mm

This has happened to Bone before when wrote a sequel to the classic Dumb & Dumber (having done due dilligence in reading Variety and other magazines to assure no one was making or thinking of making the sequel) only to have to shop it around in competition with what would become the non-classic Dumb & Dumberer.

His wife wonders if this is a sign from God. My take on it (Bone thinks it sounds Jungian) is that ideas often come in bunches, as people are constantly reacting to their culture in somewhat predictable ways. If you want to sell something, the key appears to be not on the leading edge, but slightly ahead of the leading edge.

 posted by TSO @ 09:58 
 
 


 
Comfort With Contradiction

Jonah Goldberg on the definition of a conservative:

I think any definitive definition would have to take the notion into account: Comfort with contradiction. I mean this in the broadest metaphysical sense and the narrowest practical way. Think of any leftish ideology and at its core you will find a faith that circles can be closed, conflicts resolved. Marxism held that in a truly socialist society, contradictions would be destroyed. Freudianism led the Left to the idea that the conflicts between the inner and outer self were the cause of unnecessary repressions...

Listen to Democratic politicians when they wax righteous about social policy. Invariably it goes something like this: “I simply reject the notion that in a good society X should have to come at the expense of Y.” X can be security and Y can be civil liberties. Or X can be food safety and Y can be the cost to the pocketbook of poor people. Whatever X and Y are, the underlying premise is that in a healthy society we do not have tradeoffs between good things. In healthy societies all good things join hands and walk up the hillside singing I’d like to buy the world a coke. Think about why the Left is obsessed with hypocrisy and authenticity. The former is the great evil, the latter the closest we can get to saintliness. Hypocrisy implies a contradiction between the inner and outer selves. That’s a Freudian no-no in and of itself....[part of the] general hostility the Left has to the idea that we should live in any way that doesn’t "feel" natural. We must all listen to our inner children. 

Now look at the arguments of conservatives. They are almost invariably arguments about trade-offs, costs, “the downside” of a measure...The beauty of the conservative movement — as Buckley noted in that original essay — is that we all get along with each other pretty well. The chief reason for this is that we all understand and accept the permanence of contradiction and conflict in life. Christians and Jews understand it because that’s how God set things up.
I agree with Jonah but I don't think only the left goes gaga over hypocrisy. Bill Clinton was the poster child for it wasn't he? There was much angst when it was said he was using church services for photo ops, complete with large telegenic bible. He stole conservative ideas and then took credit for them and that drove us conservatives crazy. So while I agree that hypocrisy is the joystick that moves liberals, I'm not sure it isn't a feature of modernity rather than a feature of any one party.

 posted by TSO @ 08:02 
 
 


 
Cowboys & Disco

Jeff's post about cowboys reminded me how growing up during the '70s/80s there seemed two models for dissolute men boys on the silver screen. One was John Travolta and the Saturday Night Fever mentality. It seemed a decadence. There was nothing attractive in men who were full of pride and weak with addictions.

But cowboys seemed to capture the attractive side of wildness. They were humble about their vices. They were hard workers, evidenced by the long cattle drives. Dodge City was not their life (as it was with the club worshippers), it was a reward at the end of a many months. They were forced into chastity and temperance for much of the time. There was a sort of purity in their debauchery although that makes it more dangerous since the "boys will be boys" attitude seemed attractively presented.

 posted by TSO @ 07:56 
 
 


 
Fictional Tuesday

Nuala's heritage was clouded in the otherworldly. It was said she was descended from a race of kings in a far away village in a mountainous region off the rockey Lughaidian coast.

All of the villagers there, so the tale goes, had either blood the color of robin's eggs or blood black as coal. The peasants had black blood and the royals blue and so lineage would be easy to tell except they never bled, and to bleed themselves was a great taboo and so most lived in the unknowing.

Nuala knew her father had blue blood because it was said she'd required a transfusion at birth. The country doctor was no longer alive and the details were murky, which led one villager who wore his black blood on his sleeve to call the facts made up, something said only to reassure her, since she certainly didn't look like her father. She had to admit her nose was broad and flat while her father's long and sharp. His hair was gold and her's dark, like the peasant Milesians. 

She thought it odd that when she was younger and looked even less like her father she assumed her blood blue, but now even though her nose had matured and looked a bit less flat this only seemed to remind her of how much she didn't look him. Would she trust only that which she could see, only her features? Or would she know her blood blue despite the accuser?
_

And divine grace is the inestimable treasure through which vile creatures and servants like ourselves become dear friends of our Creator. -St. Alphonsus


 posted by TSO @ 07:22 
 
 


 
2001 Film

The Lipstick Librarian describes her initial viewing of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

 posted by TSO @ 11:22 
 
May 23, 2005   


 
Sunshine On My Shoulders...

..makes me healthy.

First dark beer, and now the sun. God is good.

 posted by TSO @ 08:59 
 
 


 
Mowing the Land

Scarlett: Oh, Pa. You talk like an Irishman.
Gerald: It's proud I am that I'm Irish, and don't you be forgetting, Missy, that you're half-Irish, too. And, to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them - why, the land they live on is like their mother. Oh, but there, there. Now, you're just a child. It'll come to you, this love of the land. There's no getting away from it if you're Irish.

Is there a man whose heart doesn’t beat faster when atop a riding mower? Why, he is king of his world then, there upon his green chariot, producing a fine felt carpet in his wake! There he sits like Eddie Albert upon his tractor making the land his own. Nay I say what man doesn’t hold the immortal words of the poet Victor Mizzy close to his heart?--

Green Acres is the place to be!
Farm livin’ is the life for me,
Land, spreadin’ out, so far & wide!
Keep Manhattan just give me that countryside…
And you can do fun stuff like see how fast you can go without wrecking into a tree. This requires lightning-fast reflexes and great hand-eye coordination which I have in abundance, most obviously shown by my Kindergarden grade of S+ (satisfactory plus to the uninitiated) in coordination skills. 

You can do figure-eights, or cut messages into the turf like when in newlywed bliss I cut a swath reminding my wife I loved her. She could make it out from the 2nd story window.

Yes, few pleasures are as underrated as riding the mower. There's the smell of grass in the air, the feel of the saddle, & the knowledge that the dog poop you just ran over would've found your shoes had you a push mower. Progress may not always be progressive but exceptions can be made.

 posted by TSO @ 08:53 
 
 


 
The Rapture & Redemptive Suffering

I think the Rapture as popularized by the Left Behind series is hogwash. And one of the reasons that it sounds implausible is that it's not the divine pattern to arrange for the good to avoid suffering in this life. God shows no favoritism, unless one looks upon the opportunity to suffer as a sign of favoritism. (Do all the saints have that outlook in common? I should ask Kathy Shaidle - see previous post.)

St. Thérèse's father, for example, lapsed into mental illness and was hospitalized for the rest of his life just days after she entered the Carmelite order. An extremely bitter pill for her since she loved him so dearly. But she said that God must love her father very much to allow him to suffer so. It would never occur to her that this was a sign of divine disfavor. Similarly, another sister in her order soon fell ill and the nuns resolved to pray for her but St. Thérèse saw that it would not avail - in a dream she saw that sister with a luminous cross on her back.

 posted by TSO @ 06:50 
 
 


 
Woe to the Late Sleepers

Kathy Shaidle has stalked the saints looking for commonalities. In "A Catholic Alphabet" she writes, 

'Saint watching' is a longtime hobby of mine. The only thing I know for sure about the saints is that I know very little about them, even after years of not-very-scholarly study...(From what I can make out, the only trait they all share is an aversion to sleeping late).


 posted by TSO @ 18:35 
 
May 22, 2005   


 
Russia's Slow Suicide

This was predictable. Of course the breakup of the Soviet Union was going to be blamed for Russia's national drinking problem. The money quote: "Dr. Alexey Magalif, a prominent Moscow psychiatrist whose private clinic specializes in the treatment of alcoholism and depression, thinks Russian society has 'very deep psychological problems in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union'". 

But the same article provides a statistic that refutes this as the cause of suicide by alcohol: "Drinking began to rise dramatically in the Soviet Union about 50 years ago...per-capita consumption in 1950 was the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of pure alcohol per year. By 1985 it had soared to 3.75 gallons per person. In recent years it's climed again, to 4 gallons per person."

So it's at 3.75 gallons per person in '85 - before the fall of the Soviet Union in '89 - and we're supposed to think that the breakup was the cause? It's irritating to read this and have to pretend that there's no spiritual dimension to all of this. Nowhere in the article did it dare be politically incorrect enough to suggest that perhaps a society which cultivated atheism might eventually spiral downwards.

 posted by TSO @ 16:59 
 
 


 
Sol & Me

Back when I was young and more impressionable, I read a very influential book by Sol Gordon. This was back in the '80s when Planned Parenthood seemed a benevolent organization. I was naive and thought that experts like Dr. Gordon spoke with authority. If he said fornication was natural and normal then it might be. He seemed far more up-to-date than my fast-receding-in-memory fifth grade nun. In fact, the biggest shock, post-college, was to learn that goodness and expert opinion were so often mutually exclusive.

Gordon was very literate & wrote interesting poems & recommended novelists like Iris Murdoch, whom I hadn't hear of at the time but took a great liking to. He also had the audacity to call Margaret Sanger one of his personal heroes but I didn't know her from Adam. And it seemed his modus operandi was pleasure. The secret to life. He claimed, persuasively, that if "we want to grow up, and not old, we should be able to intensely enjoy at least the number of things equal to our age." In his view of things, survival was our first responsibility and survival was dependent on the amount of pleasure we derived. 

After all these years I googled his name. Wondered if he might be preaching a different gospel. And sadly the answer is no.

 posted by TSO @ 07:39 
 
 


 
Random Thoughts

Overheard a remarkable comment from Fr. George W. Kosicki, the editor of this book, describing an odd-sounding phrase in Pope John Paul's encyclical on mercy in which he said that our mercy should extend to Christ. Have mercy on Jesus!? Fr. Kosicki went on to briefly say that what is the Stations of the Cross and similar devotions but reparations that speak to that point?

* * * 

Concerning John Paul & Benedict: both saintly, brilliant writers and thinkers, but I'm amazed by how well they complement each other. Benedict's more accessible to me because he's more modern, less mystical, less optimistic and more practical. But on sexual ethics Ratzinger has little to say while JPII was the master. These two have been so providential, a sort of Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, for the Church.

 posted by TSO @ 07:19 
 
 


 
'80s Song Plays in the Gym - Benatar

Now I believe there comes a time
When everything just falls in line
We live an’ learn from our mistakes
The deepest cuts are healed by faith


 posted by TSO @ 15:30 
 
May 20, 2005   


 
Now I Want To Read It

Sometimes I try to play book matchmaker, a practice that has resulted in success most often with my mother. Not so impressive - I know her so well that's akin to saying "hey, I can pick out great books for me". Whooo ee!

But still, I take some pride in a recent home run for Mother's Day. I got her this book, which she is now reading a third time. The basic story is that an atheist was converted to Christianity after a near-death experience. (He became a protestant minister, so now Mom can say that I don't only give her Catholic books - she's far more ecumenically-minded than me, listening to Joyce Meyer more than anything on EWTN.)

She called the other day to say that now my sister now wants to read it because her pastor at St. Susanna recommended it during his homily. He even read the final page to the congregation!

 posted by TSO @ 14:33 
 
 


 
Quote

Here [in Latin America], to some extent, Christianity arrived by way of Spanish swords, with deadly heralds. In Mexico, at first, absolutely nothing could be done about missionary work - until the occurrence of that phenomenon of Guadalupe, and then the Son was near by way of his Mother.

--"God and the World" Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

 posted by TSO @ 13:18 
 
 


 
Bush Challenges America To Start Twenty Million New Blogs by 2009


Above: Bush urges Americans to 'blog, blog like the wind'

WASHINGTON, DC—Making a strong statement of appeal to "the long-standing tradition of bold opining that made this nation great" Monday, President Bush challenged the U.S. blogging industry to produce twenty million new blogs by summer 2009.

"My fellow Americans, it's time for more pundits," Bush said in a special prime-time address to the nation. "America has the technology. Blogger.com. Blog-city.com. We have the market-research capacity. We have the braggadocia, the bloggadocia, the bloviation and the resources to express our opinion. If we all pull together, we can create twenty million new blogs by 2009. And America will be able to hold its head high again."

"Yes I want to know about your cat. I want to know what he had for dinner last night. I want slice of life vignettes and stream o' conscious tales of life in these United States. And yes, most of all, I want your quizzes!"
__

Inspired by/cribbed from the Onion

 posted by TSO @ 16:20 
 
May 19, 2005   


 
To Tune "You Don't Bring Me Flowers"

You don’t check my license
You must think I'm middle-aged
You hardly card me anymore
When I enter the pub
At the end of the day.

I remember when...
You couldn’t wait to card me
You thought my ID was fake
You said I looked seventeen
when I was plenty lean.

Well it’s good for you barkeep,
it's saving you time
When you just serve me Guinness
And you don’t check my ID anymore

It used to be so natural,
I thought you'd card forever,
but used to be's don't count anymore
not when even short jogs make me sore. 

And barkeep I remember
before I got a few grays
before I got very far
into O'Malley's bar
my youth would jar--
...but you don't check my license anymore.


 posted by TSO @ 16:09 
 
 


 
A Poet in Winter 

From Times article:





Stanley Kunitz, Pulitzer Prize winner, poet laureate of the United States - twice, the first time from 1974 to 1976, when the title was "consultant in poetry," the second in 2000 at the age of 95 - will turn 100 this summer. And he is still hard at work, he says, in his office and his garden. 
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.


 posted by TSO @ 13:56 
 
 


 
Stream o' Consciousness     (from the 'remember what you paid' file)

I get a kind of pleasure out of scaffolding Excel macros to do in a few minutes what used to take eons. For the lazy there's no better job fit (a co-worker once said that laziness is the programmer's best friend, inspiring one to make onerous tasks light). There's a joy in latching on to the correct solution, in figuring out, for example, where Microsoft hides the source of Pivot tables. (Who knew you had to go to the wizard?)

So I admit that there are intellectual pleasures in left-brain thinking even though the right-brain is where the action is, i.e. creativity. Computers can replace the left brain but never the right; no program could produce spam poetry. (Well,...perhaps that's not the best example. Ha.)

Surprisingly, over the years my lust for retirement has abated. Perhaps a function of not being over-worked. Primarily, I suspect, due to a decreased desire to travel, which might be due to a decreased curiosity. But travel also seems a form of seeking and perhaps in my 1998 return to Catlicker fundamentalism I see less reason to look for answers in other cultures. And there's also a greater need to be of service since, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, the purpose of life is not pleasure. 

The itch to retire was mainly inspired by Henry Thoreau and Albert Brooks. Thoreau went off to the Walden woods and Brooks - in the film "Lost in America" - traveled the country in an RV. Were their choices so different? Thoreau argued that one could explore the world from a hidden corner in New England. Emily Dickinson traveled far from within her room. Brooks had something more literal in mind. 

Ham of Bone is now in a kind of semi-retirement and plans on writing screen plays till he drops. In a perfect match of subject and writer, he's doing a "biopic" of Edgar Allen Poe, with whom he has always felt a deep kinship. He recently finished a sixty hour fast for "purgative" purposes. I'm chagrined to learn that he wants to limit his drinking to only St. Patrick's Day, though there is something amusing about an English Protestant drinking only on St. Patrick's Day.

I was reading Information Week the other day and they interviewed a 57-year old making do with temporary programming jobs until he can find something permanent. He says "I'd rather do something to keep my mind sharp than playing solitaire." Retirement sounds pretty lame if explained in those terms, especially if it doesn't include ingredients like volunteer work and poetry and daily Mass.

 posted by TSO @ 13:46 
 
 


 
By Death He Conquered Death

One of the things I like about the Eastern liturgy is how carnal it is, carnal in a postive, in-carn-ational way. The responses and hymns are very matter-of-fact such as the Easter season hymn, which is sung with great gusto:

Christ is Risen,
Christ is Risen,
Christ is Risen 
From the dead!

By death he conquered death! 
By death he conquered death!
and to those in the graves
and to those in the graves
he granted,
he granted, 
he granted life!
Then it is repeated in church Slavonic, which I don't know. So I listen, and it sounds as foreign as the Who's singing "wah-hoo, wah-aay" in "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". And the message from the Whoville is that they sang without the presents, without the trees and the Christmas dinner. A good lesson to praise in all times. From Sirach 2: 
"Study the generations long past and understand; has anyone hoped in the Lord and been forsaken? has anyone called upon him and been rebuffed?"


 posted by TSO @ 12:13 
 
 


 
Proof That I Should've Taken Spanish in High School

...exhibit A and exhibit B.

 posted by TSO @ 20:52 
 
May 18, 2005   


 
Harsh, But...



Greeley's analysis of the reasons for the church's loss of authority after Vatican II is totally believable, but that is not news. What is news is that Greeley bases his belief that the Catholic church and faith will survive entirely on what early 19th-Century Europeans called a Romantic defense of religion -- essentially invented by people like Chateaubriand, it held that religion would last because it was "beautiful." Because it filled a need and no amount of scientific evidence against its dogmas or practices would make any difference. This is about what I would expect from Greeley -- an abandonment of reason and logic in favor of sentimentality.

- amazon reviewer of Andrew Greeley's latest

 posted by TSO @ 17:06 
 
 


 
Forgot to mention ...

...that the Flannery O'Connor blog was updated.

 posted by TSO @ 13:12 
 
 


 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts & Pics

The First Thing She Said: "Thank God I'm Single!" 

- Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats", on news that a Kansas woman severely brain-injured after an accident in 2002 has begun speaking 

I'll tip my hat to the Dogmatic Constitution...

- first line of Jeff Miller's revised refrain to The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again"

The life of a bookseller is very demoralizing to the intellect... He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all. He dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, with a thousand half knowledges. Almost unconciously he begins to rate literature according to what people ask for... That way lies intellectual suicide.

-Christopher Morley, in "The Haunted Bookshop" 

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier’s one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition;
like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete
with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

-Scipio of Credo Intelligam

To understand the Catholic Faith you have to understand that it is not primarily about intellect, or even morals: it is about Christ received through the sacraments, because He commanded it, and because those who love Him will do as He commands because they love Him. And He commands as He does because He loves us. Understanding may follow practice, to a greater or lesser degree. But the Catholic faith is a loving response to our King and Redeemer, not an intellectual response to a text. A Downs Syndrome Catholic who can't read the Bible is in no way lesser than a theological polymath. The Catholic faith doesn't get snagged on "what exactly is it that saves us" because the thing that saves us isn't an "it". The thing that saves us is a Who. Asking what you have to do to be saved is like asking what you have to do to make sure that your wife will still love you tomorrow (or in this context what do you have to do to make sure that you still love her tomorrow). There may be things you can do, but it isn't a mechanical process. It isn't something that you do today, making everything that you do tomorrow irrelevant. It is love.

- Zippy Catholic

Back to work...my cold is mostly behind me (prancing on the lawn at 3:00am in my nightshirt didn’t help - but I don’t think it hurt, either.)...[I'm] hoping that the ad hoc wedding coordinator that is working on one of the weddings won’t be too dismayed when I can’t find her two altar servers of equal size. And her message also said that I should bear in mind that the bride is a tall girl. What does that mean? She wants tall servers to make her look shorter - or short servers to make her look taller? This is a church, lady, not central casting. 

- Ellyn of Oblique House

It's like herding cats... shepherding the intellectual lives of theologians and philosophers. But it has to be done. Free enough to be joyous and productive (catching lots of mice, teaching lots of students, leaping out the hayloft window, following the fascinating new concept.....) and controlled enough to stay safe (not get lost off the farm or hit by a car, not wandering off into heresy or getting mauled by other creatures on and about the place....). 

- Karen of Anchor Hold

A priest I know once pointed out to me that one of the marks of the satanic is that it claims to see right through you, to identify you with your sins and pin you to the wall like a bug on a card. The devil, in speaking to Jesus, says "I know who you are!" He does the same to us. He says "I see right through you. You are your sins. This is who you really are!" 

- Mark Shea

I suddenly had a whole new vision of how much God loves us. I was so used to the popular view that Earth is merely average and ordinary. No matter how fully I accepted the idea that God created the universe for man, I was indoctrinated with the concept of our world being just one more average little planet, in one more average little galaxy, tucked away in a remote corner of the universe. Robin Collins had a whole new view. God could have created the universe with a sense of delight over giving us surprises. This was an astonishing spiritual insight to our relationship with God. 

- Julie of Happy Catholic

I'm not saying this to suggest my superior spirituality. Far from it. Most days, I'm barely hanging on in that respect, my faith this strange, fluid mix of constant questions and moments of complete trust.

- Amy Welborn

I’m Too Sexy for This Faith 

- title of huffingtonstoast.com parody post attributed to Andrew Sullivan


(photo credit - Jeff)

 posted by TSO @ 09:57 
 
 


 
Good Cop, Bad Cop

(-a parody, not available in stores!-)

Need a good spiritual pick-me-up? Too cheap to spring for the hundred bucks that most retreat centers ask? Then experience the pleasure/pain of a Blog RetreatTM with retreat masters Hans & Franz! They will Pump You Up!

Hans & Franz took their show on the virtual road three years ago. They call it "Good Cop, Bad Cop": Hans will flatten your psyche and harden your abs with his x-ray vision of your sins and the sins of others. Got a problem with presumption? Come to Hans bebe! Armed with a stiletto pen and a razor mind, he'll remind you of the depravity of self and mankind.

Got a problem with despair? Come to Franz, who as the good cop sees God's mercy as truly powerful and not just something buried in the fine print. Armed with a spirituality that recognizes the desert and can find water there, Franz will help you see not only yourself but also others as God's children.

 posted by TSO @ 09:39 
 
 


 
2001 Redux

Accountants are going over the numbers now, but the volume of email response to the 2001 review has been unprecedented! Early reports show two pro-2001's and two anti-2001s, so I guess this is one of those movies you either love or hate. (It also spawned a thoughtful review, in which Steven suggests in Hal and the endeavor as a vision of man unaided by God.)

Since Kubrick is generally recognized as a film genius, I don't claim to say anything other than I don't get it, but I'm certainly happy for those who do. One of the things I try to guard against is measuring things against my subjective standard and calling it objective. Someone once told me that Beethoven's music was not qualitatively better than rap music, which dramatically reflects our modern tendency towards relativity.

 posted by TSO @ 09:08 
 
 


 
Time Waster

Amazon.com has a new concordance feature on new books that tells you the 100 most frequently used words the author used. I picked a conservative and a liberal.

See if you can pick out which is which from their 100 most used words*.



always am american art authority beauty behavior believe between birth bishops catholic catholicism century change church clergy control council countries does even event experience fact faith first go god good grace heritage however human imagination indeed issues laity less life little liturgists liturgy lives long love mass may metaphors might must need new often old own parish people percent perhaps pope power priests problem question reform religion religious revolution right rules sacraments say schools search see seem sex sexual should states still stories structures study teaching think though thought time two vatican want whether wineskins women work world wrong years 
__
against america american among approach belief between catholic century charity child children christian church considered dewey economic education educational end era even example experience explained fact faith father first god good great himself human ideas indeed individual intellectual itself james john kind law life man matter may men merely method mind modern moral movement must natural nature need new order own part philosophy point pope pragmatism principles progressive question reason religion religious school science scientific secular set shields should simply social society sociology soul state study supernatural system teaching themselves things thought thus time true truth view whose work world

* - okay, okay I know the word "sex" gives this one away.

 posted by TSO @ 21:19 
 
May 17, 2005   


 
a case of bookcase lust

Received a fine oaken bookcase, via a relative, and placed it next to the computer where it serves as both distraction and a constant prompt of wonder. The books look fiercely handsome in the new case, their hues glowing in the diffuse light. The titles glisten with poetry: 

el beisbol
Baghdad without a map
in Patagonia
Europe on a Saturday night
ciao, America!
passage to Juneau
the spears of twilight
notes from a small island
amazon journal
stranger in the forest
how I worked my way around the world
the water in between


 posted by TSO @ 21:10 
 
 


 
Inspired by a Steven Riddle Post

I wonder how much of the Crucifixion was for purpose of atonement and how much was simply the dramatic gesture of showing that the love he taught wasn't merely words. Was part of his death not because of our sins per se but our difficulty in conceiving his ability to love us? It seems that the blood-sweat in the garden of Gethsemane was a visible measure of love, his Blood already willing to be outside himself and within us.

 posted by TSO @ 19:56 
 
 


 
1997 Quote

"I have often reflected since then on this remarkable disposition of Providence: that, in this century of progress and faith in science, the Church should have found herself represented most clearly in very simple people, in a Bernadette of Lourdes, for instance, or even in a Brother Konrad, who hardly seemed to be touched by the currents of the time. Is this a sign that the Church has lost her power to shape culture and can take root only outside the real current of history? Or is it a sign that the clear view of the essential, which is so often lacking in the "wise and prudent" (see Mt 11:25), is given in our days, too, to little ones? I do think that precisely these "little" saints are a great sign to our time, a sign that moves me ever more deeply, the more I live with and in our time."
- Cardinal Ratzinger in Milestones

 posted by TSO @ 12:44 
 
 


 
John Paul the Personalist

Upper lips flabbed
during the days of Donahue
donning the skin of eggshells
we cried at Oprah's touch.

'Where has duty gone?'
Dr. Laura asked
'Get over yourself!'
Judge Judy rasped.

But it was the Age of Machines
and the personal was personal:
Christ died to save all mankind--
but did he die for me? 

So came a wise man from the East
with lips not stiff or soft,
like God he saw just opportunity
where donkeys and elephants had not. 


 posted by TSO @ 06:54 
 
 


 
On the Eastern Catholic Liturgy

One of the refrains in the Byzantine liturgy that I find particularly appealing are references to Christ as "lover of mankind". Lovers of mankind are few and far between and perhaps can only truly be said of Christ and His mother. Many of us are either lovers of individuals while vaguely aware of "mankind", or sensitive to the plight of "mankind" while heedless of individuals. Christ cares about both individuals and mankind and of him the title "lover of mankind" isn't unwashed sentimentality.
__

The Byzantine rite often repeats things three times, in honor of the Holy Trinity, but when I first began attending the liturgy I thought they did that because the chances were increased that we'd be fully attentive during at least one of the three repetitions.
__

Some of the Troparions sang from the latest liturgy: 

Blessed are You, O Christ our God. You filled the fishermen with wisdom, sending down upon them the Holy Spirit. Through them You have caught the whole world in Your net. O Lover of Mankind, glory be to You. 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and forever. Amen. When the Most High descended and confused tongues, He scattered the people; but when He distributed the tongues of fire, He called all men to unity. Therefore with one voice, let us praise the Most Holy Spirit.


 posted by TSO @ 06:45 
 
 


 
Innerestin'

From Times review of John Cornwell's "The Pontiff in Winter", on Pope John Paul's difficulty in reconciling freedom and order: 

Cornwell's view of the conflict between top-down ''fundamentalism'' and bottom-up ''pluralism'' is unduly Manichaean. But he is right to see that the church now faces a choice between schism (if it goes too liberal) and a '' 'remnant' catacomb church'' (if it goes too conservative). That this tension worsened during the papacy of John Paul II does not necessarily prove the pope was at fault. It may mean only that Christianity has proved a much harder faith to practice ''moderately'' than both its defenders and its detractors used to assume. 


 posted by TSO @ 17:05 
 
May 16, 2005   


 
Blogging Like It's 1499

Something tells me this blogger is trying too hard. The whole zen of blogging is not to care (which I'm struggling to get better at - *grin*). Who among us hasn't had the experience of more good coming from inadvertent comments than advertent ones? Plus, the removal of SiteMeter has made me fifty percent less anal retentive by volume. The great James Lileks has neither comments nor a statistics monitoring tool, so I follow his example. Now if I could write like him!

(Hat tip Julie.)

 posted by TSO @ 17:02 
 
 


 
Quotables

Rule number one: never read anything theological before bedtime.

I wanted to read Bleak House last night but I simply (cliche ahead!) could not put Cardinal Ratzinger's books down and ended up reading them all night. Technically speaking that is; i.e. past midnight. The way he puts things is so disarmingly honest and explicatory that it's extremely difficult to disengage. 

Here are excerpts from Milestones and The Ratzinger Report:

Revelation is not a meteor fallen to earth that now lies around somewhere as a rock mass from which rock samples can be taken and submitted to laboratory analysis. Revelation has instruments; but it is not separable from the living God, and it always requires a living person to whom it is communicated. Its goal is always to gather and unite men, and this is why the Church is necessary aspect of revelation. If, however, revelation is more than Scripture, if it transcends Scripture, then the "rock analysis" - which is to say, the historical-critical method - cannot be the last word concerning revelation; rather, the living organism of the faith of all ages is then an intrinsic part of revelation. And what we call "tradition" is precisely that part of revelation that goes above and beyond Scripture and cannot be comprehended within a code of formulas. 
__

The Catholicism of my native Bavaria knew how to provide room for all that was human, both prayer and festivities, penance and joy. A joyful, colorful, human Christianity...While Protestantism certainly could give the impression of superiority and greater learning, I was more convinced by the great tradition of the Fathers and medieval masters...Protestantism arose at the beginning of modern times, and thus it is much more closely related to the inner energies which produced the modern age than Catholicism is. It has acquired the form it has today largely in the confrontation with the great philosophical currents of the nineteenth century. It is wide open to modern thought, and, as well as constituting a threat to it, that constitutes both its opportunity and its danger. 
_

Ratzinger considers that where Protestants and Catholics live side by side, the latter are more in danger of adopting the positions of the former. "Genuine Catholicism", he says, "is a highly sensitive balance, an attempt to unite aspects in life which seem to contradict one another and yet which guarantee the completeness of the Credo."
Perfect. That's it, isn't it? Holding the tension of seemingly contradictory notions makes Catholicism less accessible. "Both/and" is faithful to Scripture, but difficult for the human mind period (let alone in theology, where it is exacerbated by our desire to put God in a box).

 posted by TSO @ 10:47 
 
 


 
Good Fit For Pope Benedict

From Lives of Saints, concerning St. Benedict:

The order which Benedict founded has spread over the earth. It was mainly responsible for the conversion of the Teutonic races...


 posted by TSO @ 09:15 
 
 


 
Book O'licious

Memed by Julie of the winsomely named blog and arguably the most likeable person in St. Blogland. (Speaking of memes, regarding that earlier one about things I "just don't get" I forgot one: the voluminous bedrooms of the 3000+ square foot McMansions that are popular now. You could fit an Olympic-sized pool in some of the master bedrooms. I mean, I can understand a big living room. But bedroom? I don't even want to know what people do in rooms that size.)

Total Number of Books I’ve Owned: Somewhere north of 3,000. Not many by Steven Riddle standards, but enough to encourage rootedness since the thought of moving them leaves me underwhelmed. 

Last Book I Bought: Dom Cuthbert Butler's history of the first Vatican Council. (Couldn't find "Thomists Are From Mars, Augustinians from Venus" else I'd probably gotten that.)

Last Book I Read: Mr. Blue – Myles Connolly

5 Books that mean a lot to me: An impossible question. I'll expand it a bit. Since the bible & the catechism are everyone's list I'll assume they transcend the category. 


The Correspondence of Walker Percy & Shelby Foote - Tolsen, ed.

Old Thunder – A Life of Hilaire Belloc - Joseph Pearce

Lost in the Cosmos - W. Percy 

Sun Dancing - Geoffrey Moorhouse 

The Circle Dancers - Diana Der-Hovanessian

Rome Sweet Home - Hahn

The Secret of the Rosary - St. Louis De Monfort

Stonewall Jackson - James Robertson 


 posted by TSO @ 09:13 
 
 


 
Movie Review

Saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time over the weekend, which continued my string of not really liking criticially-acclaimed movies. Roger Ebert called it "transcendent". Man I am so jaded.

A short synopsis:

Ape-like humans protect watering hole by performing early rendition of Jane Fonda aerobic routine, complete with whimpy rebel yells that wouldn't even have scared McClellan. One ape discovers the destructive capabilities of a bone and aerobics routine is no longer effective. Moral: ignorance is bliss.

Something buried on Moon. Four million years ago. Very suspicious. Astronauts go to Jupiter. 

HAL 9000, a super computer, can read lips. Who knew? Hal discovers that the crew is going to take him out so he takes out the crew first. And you thought the blue screen of death was bad.

Space pod ends up in somebody's living room. That can happen. Astronaut interrupts a man eating. Man looks over his shoulder. Continues eating. Then gets up. It's the astronaut! Then same astronaut is in bed, looking much older. Turns out Kubrick could imagine a lot of stuff in 1968 for 2001 but not the invention of Botox.

At the end, the '60s montage drags a bit. Psychedelic colors - L.S.D. reference? Fortunately, the greatest proof that mankind is progressing - Tivo - allows me to quickly fastforward. A baby in the womb is shown and show's over. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. And stay away from the brown acid kids.

 posted by TSO @ 07:21 
 
 


 
On Pentecost



By Augustine's day Pentecost was a separate liturgical festival, and Augustine understood it as a celebration of an event no less historical than the birth of Christ. In a sermon preached on the day of Pentecost, he says, we are celebrating "the solemnity of a day so holy, that today the Holy Spirit himself came." 
- Robert Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
_

The Straight Dope on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
_

Gifts versus fruits of the Holy Spirit.

 posted by TSO @ 07:49 
 
May 15, 2005   


 
Good Reads

Reading tames the savage beast - or more likely I need to read if only in order not to feel deprived. Call it a placebo.

Tonight I caught a glimpse of Sen. Bradley’s wife’s memoir and it was greedily consumed. She was born and lived her formative life in Germany (close to the Czech border but at least it’s southern Germany), a country pleasingly foreign and yet not-so-foreign, impregnated as it is with ancestral resonances. It promises to be chockful of Germanic things, a plump memoir meaty with literary allusions (she’s quite the reader).

My ancestors came from "good" places to come from, if I can say that without bias. If living in the Midwest is an impediment to a strong sense of place (New England and the South have much more history and "placeness") then my ancestors are rich in what I lack. Southern Germany is the stuff of novels: the land of the Schwarzvald, castles, and Bavarian solicitude. The other side of the family came from Ireland, home of kings and saints, warriors and poets. I could read about either for quite a while.

 posted by TSO @ 22:34 
 
May 13, 2005   


 
TAN Books Update

 posted by TSO @ 21:07 
 
 


 
Evolutionary Exchange

Normally I try to receive permission before posting emails but one takes liberties with blog friends. Steven Riddle is an expert on things paleo, so I asked him about reconciling this quote I happened across a while ago (didn't save the author's name): 

"Augustine seems to be the first observer, at least in writing, to have noticed the greed, jealousy, and rage of which the human infant is capable. By pointing out the survival advantages of the infant's relentless self-interest, Mr. Miceli raises a central dilemma that has yet to be addressed by contemporary theology in dealing with original sin: how do we reconcile evolution with Genesis? If these behaviors are not only advantageous but evolutionarily essential, how can they be regarded as products of sin, which entered history only at the moment of our First Parents and which in any event must be eschewed? This question, in essence, constitutes Nietzche's central objection to Christian ethics..."
To which he offered a helpful answer, excerpted partially here: 
My answer is that Augustine placed adult interpretations on infant behaviors--he saw rage--was it hunger? He saw jealousy--what was it really? Having a child really changed my perspective on what children are feeling with respect to adults. My little boy spent much of the years from 1-4 in a world with which I had remarkably little contact or understanding. The state of being simply isn't the same. Rage isn't anger at this age it is pain inside, etc. In other words, this is one of those places that I think Augustine was just plain wrong...[But] if I grant that Augustine is right, it still poses no problem for me because somewhere along the line God did intervene and made human beings of an entirely different order of creation than all the rest [since] human beings are the only animals that can choose consistently to act contrary to their own natures.


 posted by TSO @ 09:07 
 
 


 
Ham o' Bone Responds to an Earlier Post


"I now think that the antichrist will be riding a 2054 Hover KX4."
Always so prescient, that Bone. Except for the global depression. :-)

 posted by TSO @ 07:06 
 
 


 
Fictional Friday

"I just got in this to write about it, to experience it. I don't care about being Trump's apprentice," I told my brother at a family gathering. "I'm thinking of just walking off the set. I'm going to get killed in the boardroom. We're down to six and I can't hide anymore. I can't just do a decent job on the tasks and survive by being small. He's going to say, 'you've never been project leader for ten tasks! You've never volunteered for anything! Why are you here?'."

"Just go in there and schmooze and be political. That's what he's looking for."

"You know I can't smooze. A decent handshake is as good as I can manage - after that it's inevitably downhill."

"Look you made it this far-"

"I don't want to trash the family name."

"It'll be more embarrassing to the family if you walk off the set! You don't think they won't spend a lot of air time on that?"

"You may be right but the more I fight in the boardroom the more obvious it will be that I have no case to make and the more ridiculous I'll look."

"You wanted to to experience, to observe, to write. Why would you pass up the boardroom!? Why would you pass on the experience of hearing Donald Trump say, 'You're fired!'? For that reason alone you should go."

"Well, okay. I guess. But it's not going to be pretty... and you're going to be infamous by association!"

"That's what family's for. At least since Adam & Eve.


 posted by TSO @ 06:51 
 
 


 
WFB Review

William F. Buckley reviews Ross Duthat's book "Privilege" about Harvard:

His fine coda tells of the author’s sensitivity and the range of his concern. 
“I hope, in the end, that I love Harvard as we should love the world: not because it is good (it is not) but because there is good in it, and things worth fighting for. Perhaps the rest will pass away, until in my memory and the memory of my classmates only the best remains, the beauty of the place and the promise of greatness, a promise that went unfulfilled in my four years but endures nonetheless — as if around another corner, through another ivied gate, there waits the university of our imagination, the Harvard of our unrequited dreams."


 posted by TSO @ 16:00 
 
May 12, 2005   


 
Quotable

There are no longer any deep loves or passionate devotions to great causes; expediency and self-interest are too general. Politics and economics are our major interests, and neither can warm the souls of men. Our fires of patriotism, evangelization, and zeal are being reduced to embers. We are cold, dull, and apathetic. One tiny effect of that want of fire is the fact that in our Western world there are but few orators. Most men in public life are readers. 

-Archbishop Fulton Sheen


 posted by TSO @ 15:32 
 
 


 
From the latest National Review

Michael Potemra on Pope Benedict's false reputation:

He shows a sensitive appreciation of developments in other denominations, applauding what he sees as “a new vitality” in Protestantism: “The Evangelicals and fundamentalists always used to be typical leaders of the opposition to the papacy. But there have been astonishing changes there, because they can see that the Pope is actually the Rock who asserts before all the world exactly what they confess in opposition to modern versions of watered-down Christianity. So, from a certain point of view, they see the Pope as their strong ally, even though their old reservations have not been cleared away. . . . What we dare to hope for we should await confidently, but with great patience.” Lest this be misinterpreted as a belief that Protestants will be simply absorbed into Roman Catholicism, Ratzinger says, “The formula that the great ecumenists have invented is that we go forward together. It’s not a matter of our wanting to achieve certain processes of integration. . . . [The Catholic Church] will allow herself to be educated and led by the Lord.”...

He shows the same basic generosity of spirit in miniature, when he discusses Caiaphas, the Sanhedrin leader who condemned Jesus and has been presented as a pure villain throughout much of history: “As high priest, Caiaphas is responsible for the faith of Israel. Naturally it doesn’t occur to him that he might really be condemning the living Son of God to death. He sees in Jesus someone who has done injury to the very heart of the Jewish creed, the belief in one God, by the presumptuous claim to be himself God’s Son. And, certainly, he does this in a state of blindness, unable to perceive the mystery; his faith is encapsulated in a formula. We ought not to be too ready to condemn him, since in some way he believes, of course, that he is acting responsibly on behalf of religion.”...

After making his way through these books, the reader may be hungry for graduate-level Ratzinger — for example, his 1968 book Introduction to Christianity, a meditation on the Apostles’ Creed. Here he writes of an adult faith in which doubt and belief coexist:
Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. . . . [Man exists] in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction.


 posted by TSO @ 08:39 
 
 


 
Meme Me Up Scotty

The young & talented Enbrethiliel has tagged me. Five things about which I ask 'what's the big deal?'. 

1) American Idol. Never seen it, but it appears to have a cult-like following. Perhaps it's unfair to have something on the list I haven't personally tried but...

2) Jazz music. Blues I can get into, but jazz gets under my skin. Bad jazz is worse - Kenny G music would get me to talk at Guantanamo. 

3) Bingo. I wrote a post a couple weeks about it. One could also put in this category Las Vegas, which I know I'll have to visit some day if only to try to understand the fuss.

4) American Express credit card. Let's see...you have to pay for the right to carry their card? Am I missing something? 

5) Longaberger Basketry - every year there's a convention that takes place downtown not far from where I work. I see thousands heading to convene on all things Longaberger. It's one of the most inexplicable things I've ever seen. To each his own as they say.

 posted by TSO @ 07:48 
 
 


 
Evolution of a Blogger

Despite appearances to the contrary you just don't become a blogger over night. It takes years of practice and preparation. You have to earn your spot in the trenches of complete anonymity in order to earn a shot at near complete anonymity. Here was my path to blogging greatness:

Pre-1990:
I cut my teeth on poetry. A sample began:

Bad poetry,
Ain't kilt no one yet.
1990-1998:

Something called Profs Notes was the preferred corporate communication before Lotus Notes. In the days of Profs, fellow conscriptees would pass notes under the barrack walls, bonding over our shared juvenility. [Warning, rough language ahead.] Example:
"In one of the ironies of [this company] you might notice when next riding the 'vadors [elevators] that if you say only the first syllable of every other word in the phrase that appears therein, namely, "Press alarm button for assistance." you get 'Press butt ass', a bit redundant I know."

Reply by fellow conscript: "Hmmmmmmm, and if you say only the first syllable of every word, you get 'Press all butt for ass.' Seems kinda' blatenly obvious, eh?"

Reply by another conscript: "If you get on the elevators at [company name] and say out loud what I am usually thinking, you will get "f*ck. f*ck. F*CK.!!!"
1998-Present:

Began a private journal. Equal parts exaggeration and lamentation with a twist of self-pity. Shaken, not stirred. Example:


[On moving from the first home I'd owned]: My house is like a gunfighter, making his last stand. He’s there with his Colt rifle, standing in the aging sun, a bit sad that it has to come to this. I’m a bit sad, too, in that all the creature-comforts I’ve built up will be ripped suddenly and new ones will have to be stitched in the garment of life. The comforts I think of include the short drive to work, the cavernous book room downstairs, the 2-minutes to Kroger, the ancient and crusty (pun noted) Antolino’s pizza tradition...Yes, I can’t kid myself, it will be tough. I’m ready though, and now I freefall like Van Halen, singing ‘might as well jump’. 
_

We discussed the relative value of suffering for Christians, whether the Red Sox will ever win a World Series (speaking of suffering), whether the French film Ham rented was a ‘ship movie (short for relationship, i.e. chick flick), the best place to put one’s money during the coming global depression (metals vs cash), the best way to allocate one’s lunch money, whether the anti-Christ will drive an S.U.V. (me taking the con, Ham the pro), how to get rich by checking friend’s couch cushions, the best way to drink a Guinness (four opposing fingers to thumb), the healthiness of watching too many X-files, Mr Boo’s last vowell movement, and whether either of us could come up with an oxymoron using the word "oxymoron". (More journal excerpts here.)
One of the things I like about blogging is the low expectations. It's something we can be good at. Let's face it, we don't really have to worry about the Peter Principle in blogland. 

And generally I like what I'm good at. I like playing basketball more than baseball because I'm much better at it. I chose a career for similar reasons (or at least my reviews are good). But the rub is that what I did not choose - to be a Christian - is also what I'm not particularly good at. For once I can't alter the playing field to my own advantage. That that bothers me goes to pride of course.

 posted by TSO @ 07:20 
 
 


 
T-Shirts & Bier

Funny shirt from the blogger at The Cafeteria Is Closed. The money quote: "Eat what's on the table kids!".

And Julie's humorous post reminds me of an email I got immediately after Pope Benedict XVI's selection. One of my favorite German brewers is Spaten, makers of Franzikaner biers. They sent out this email:

Pope Benedict XVI enjoys Franziskaner weissbeer !!!!! 

"...Cardinal Bertone said he occasionally allows himself a glass of "excellent" wine from Piedmont. Manuela Macher, co-owner of the Cantina Tirolese, a Bavarian restaurant near the Vatican where he is a regular, said he also liked an occasional German beer, Franziskaner Weissbier. Which raises a question: Does he order the large size or the small?" 


 posted by TSO @ 19:23 
 
May 11, 2005   


 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Teletubbies. 

- Erik Keilholtz self-reported favorite television show, on Summa Mama's blog. As Letterman said of Madonna, he 'loves to shock us'.

He hands me another rock, his brown eyes wide and says, "Daddy, what kind of rock is this?" And living where we do the answer is nearly always the same...I rejoice that the same answer is always new to him. 

- Steven Riddle, excerpt of poem concerning his son Samuel

Since you can’t do or be anything without existing, it does not seem like a stretch to say that existence — i.e. reproduction — is the most important purpose of sex. Without existence, nothing else would matter. I guess in today’s overcrowded world, bringing in new people may not seem very important or even desirable. But we were not created for an overcrowded world. And even now, all eight billion of us who live here are doomed to die. There’s only one thing that will keep humanity going from now till Judgment Day, and it ain’t a good blow job.

- Camassia, who went on to write that "if God or evolution or whatever created a system where existence itself depends on a particular sex act, I’m taking that as a pretty big sign that that's the reason sex exists."

I know this because of the times someone confesses something like, 'I cheated on my boyfriend.' When you unpack this statement, you discover that the 'penitent' is confessing having had sex with someone other than the steady boyfriend with whom she regularly fornicates. She is not confessing fornication, mind you. And if you point out that she shouldn't be fornicating at all, you get a quizzical look. That's not the sin she's interested in confessing.

- Fr. Wilson on Amy's blog

Sometimes I really want to complain about my lot in life. Today, while making a call at a local government agency, the office was completely dead. Paid employees - making more than I do, no doubt - were sitting around reading the newspaper. How come I can never land jobs like this? 

- Jeff C. of Hallowed Ground

To throw something else into the mix, consider what St. Thomas says. He asks, "Is it better to love a friend or an enemy?" The objection says "an enemy," because it's more difficult. But Thomas says it's better to love a friend, because a friend represents a greater good for us, and virtue or merit is measured not by its degree of difficulty, but by its goodness. The best thing is what's good, not necessarily what's the most difficult. After all, some sins are difficult to commit, like planning and carrying out a bank robbery. It takes a lot of effort. This is why I like St. Thomas--he's so balanced.

- Sr. Lorraine on Dispuations

It is with some reluctance that I venture to disagree with the formidable Elinor Dashwood; yet Apes rush in where fools fear to tread. 

- Bob of "Trousered Ape" (life insurance paid up Bob?)

I [think] non-hugginess might be an Irish thing, at least sometimes. I have a lot of theories about how Irish teaching nuns influenced the personality of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Brooklynites who may not have been or strongly identified as Irish. I don't know -- I've seen something in my own family that I have wanted to chalk up to that Irish-Brooklyn thing, which is a weird combination of hard belligerence and deep sappiness, as demonstrated by overwrought special-occasion toast speeches and flowery poetry-and-extra-translucent-layer-equipped greeting cards from relatives you'd better watch yourself in front of at ordinary gatherings lest you knock that huge chip off their shoulder. 

- Recovering Owl

I almost enjoy the rhetoric about "safe abortions." This is like describing a robbery where the person being robbed was killed, but the robber walked safely away. 

- Jeff Miller of "Curt Jester"

The whimsical insight is not an oxymoron. 

- Bill Luse of Apologia, in a particularly fine post. 

 posted by TSO @ 15:48 
 
 


 
Bier Hier!

Julie's humorous post reminds me of an email I got immediately after Pope Benedict XVI's selection. One of my favorite German beers is brewed by Spaten (supply your own umlaut) and so they sent me the following email:



Pope Benedict XVI enjoys Franziskaner weissbeer !!!!! 

...Cardinal Bertone said he occasionally allows himself a glass of "excellent" wine from Piedmont. Manuela Macher, co-owner of the Cantina Tirolese, a Bavarian restaurant near the Vatican where he is a regular, said he also liked an occasional German beer, Franziskaner Weissbier. Which raises a question: Does he order the large size or the small? 


 posted by TSO @ 14:39 
 
 


 
Mr. SpamMan

Inspired by Bill's post (sing to the tune of Mr. Sandman):

Mr. SpamMan
you're quite the dream
or more a nightmare 
so it would seem.
You misspell words
to sidestep the filter
your own grandma? 
you would surely bilk her!

SpamMan
you're easy to hate
you treat women
as if they were bait.
You offer drugs
that we've never heard of
and peddle lust as if a
proxy for love! 

Mr. SpamMan
we're on to your game
you fill our inbox
without any shame.
Don't need your Cialis
or valium bliss
so go on packing 
for you won't be missed!


 posted by TSO @ 09:09 
 
 


 
Faithful Friends

They perfume the library with their aging pages and I wonder how some of them ever landed here in the first place, chosen by a younger me or perhaps found at thrift shops when thrift was crucial. I feel sentimental towards old, unread books who have patiently waited their turn for naught. A sense of loyalty induces me to pick them up and read a bit.

Elliot Paul's non-fictional "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and its appropriately nostalgic title is a good place to begin. Published in 1942, I read at random: "The trouble with Madam Claire," said the cook Therese, with finality, "is that she has no sins of her own to weep about."

I love obscure books by authors long dead. They are like bloggers, having small-to-extinct audiences, and yet retaining dignity by the uniqueness of their voice and time. 

My wife gave me a signed copy of Jeanne Candido's Civil War story "The Redemption of Corporal Nolan Giles". Wonderfully obscure. Lloyd Abbey's "The Last Whale" has survived at least eight moves and is still revered in memory if not enough to warrant completion. Alan Bron's "Audrey Hepburn's Neck" survives too, if only on the strength of the title and cover art. 

I've read a few of William F. Buckley's Blackford Oakes series but none in the last twenty years. So I'm glad to see "Mongoose, R.I.P" and know that some pleasures are still stored in this literary wine cellar. 

Sentiment clings to "The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories", purchased during a long ago visit to Manhattan...I recall reading the fantasy "Lord Foul's Bane" in between sets at a gym in college. Good memories, all. E-books will never replace the real deal.

 posted by TSO @ 08:55 
 
 


 
Poems Inspired by Spring Wearing Summer's Clothes


From a Terrace at the Hotel Casa Granda

They say that the Havanans
are the happiest of the destitute*,
the sun there echoes of Genoa
and dresses them in joy-suit.

~ ~ ~

A Day's Worth of Difference

Monday

I can't be held responsible 
when Kiss of the Rose plays
inside my 'phones and the road goes to asphalt-melt
and I feel like Fiedler 
directing a campus of shimmer. 

Tuesday:

The sun wrote checks
my body couldn't cash.
Thor laid his golden hammer down
and now the hardest chair
smacks of gossamer
just for the joy of sitting. 

__

* - it was in the latest National Review so you know it's true. In this poem the Hotel Casa Granda is Heaven, the sun Christ, and the destitute are the spiritually poor.

 posted by TSO @ 22:07 
 
May 10, 2005   


 
Verse Manufactured With Spam Received 5/10/05 9:02 E.S.T

  (actual spam content is italicized)



Incredible Offers,
seems a lie
for the pork Ephrine 
consult your rabbi. 

Urban Bena-D50 
sounds like a rap group,
synangia hydrocollidine
sounds like a dupe.

This company is cranking up
The PR in high gear
but will stoic Codafen sell
without passion dear? 


 posted by TSO @ 09:17 
 
 


 
Augustinians & Thomists

Googled for opinions about how Thomists differ from Augustinians. Reflections below do not reflect my own views, which are worth less than the paper this is not printed on. First up, an interesting column on Pope Benedict's Augustinian roots:

As a theologian the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI has been described as Augustinian rather than Thomist and more "ressourcement" than "aggiornamento."...

St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest theologians of the ancient church, is noted for his strong emphasis on the corruption of human nature by sin and the absolute necessity of grace for salvation.

St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest medieval theologians, did not deny sin or the need for grace, but he placed greater emphasis on the goodness of nature, including human nature.

For an Augustinian theologian like the new pope, "there's a certain pessimism about what a human being can do on his own without God's grace," said Dennis Doyle, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio. "I think that does color his approach, and it mixes in very well with his strong anti-Marxism, which is also at the same time an anti-utopianism, the idea that human beings should not try to create a perfect world on their own."

The idea that there is "something very negative about the human experience if we consider it apart from God's grace ... is a strong characteristic of his work," Doyle said.

Andrew Sullivan writes:
The most telling difference between the pope [Wojtila] and the prefect [Ratzinger] is John Paul II's more successful blend of Augustinian otherworldliness and Thomist trust.
From The Tablet: 
There had been a long and intense debate over the formulation of Gaudium et Spes. Afterwards the progressives who had come together to support its passage separated out. One of those who had always had his reservations was Joseph Ratzinger, who at Vatican II was one of the periti or theological experts. For Ratzinger, as an Augustinian, the pastoral constitution was too Thomist, too ready to see grace at work in the world, too hesitant to put the Cross at the centre of everything. 
The future is Augustinian?

On John Paul the Great's unique way: 
While rooted in both the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions, it is crystal clear that John Paul's Theology of the Body has a startling and unexpected new "twist." It, together with his other works, represents a new synthesis, a new way of conveying the faith to the modern world. This new approach is necessary because most people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries do not think and act in the categories of either Saint Thomas or Saint Augustine.

Both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas lived and taught in a culture which might be described as objective, deductive, and principled. The modern world is primarily subjective, inductive, and experiential.

Many will insist that John Paul II is a Thomist. Of course, he is! St. Thomas was an Augustinian. Each new synthesis builds on the previous ones. There is no question that John Paul II is a Thomist. But there is also no question that he is building a new theological synthesis which will be one of the building blocks of the Church in the twenty-first century and beyond. The Augustinian synthesis was the way the Church thought about Revelation for about eight hundred years! St. Thomas' synthesis was in place for more than seven hundred years. If the pattern holds, John Paul II's synthesis will be with us for centuries.


 posted by TSO @ 14:50 
 
May 9, 2005   


 
Various Thoughts

I’ve been watching Steven Riddle’s rediscovery of poetry with a tinge of envy. There is an aliveness that comes from writing poems or stories that should be its own reward. Too often utilitarianism rears its ugly head and we think that if we don’t get paid for something in some form then it is worthless. 
_

One of the things that fascinates me is how families all have their own dynamic, their own idiosyncracies and with a sort of internal pace to doing things. I was not aware of these differences pre-marriage. One of the more fascinating studies would be to check for similarities between "outlaws" in order to tell us something about the family in question. I note a familiar pattern in my wife's outlaws: semi-cold, non-huggers, independent souls who are attracted to a family and spouses who are hugging, warm, and mutually dependent.
_

a religious dialogue, having already had the experience of the futility of arguing both infancy narratives really happened:

A: "After years of reading about the infancy stories I finally had to make a decision whether Luke or Matthew was true. Because they both can't be. They are wildly different. So I decided I believe Luke."

TS: "Why do you have to decide and how can you know? There are some things that we simply don't know. I can't say 'I have to decide what the weather will be next weekend and I've decided it will be sunny.'...There are scholars who say that as far as the Christology of Matthew, well, 'you can't make that up'...
__

I find it hard to take the Laura Bush flap seriously, partially because I thought everything she said was so over-the-top that it couldn't be taken seriously. If a joke went "then John Paul II killed the guy..." I couldn't really be offended because I knew this was an example of the theatre of the absurd. But if it was a joke in which the actor could've killed that would be a different matter. Same thing with Laura Bush or Lynn Cheney going to a strip club. I suppose everyone's sense of humor is different, but other than the Desperate Housewives reference I thought it hilarious, though admittedly we have to be sensitive to what is a stumbling block to our brother. Still, I'm not losing sleep over my nieces thinking that because Lynn Cheney goes to strip clubs then she can. 

I tend to think it shows the typical lack of finesse we have in picking our battles. (Blogs exacerbate this, tending to 'major in minors'.) No, I wouldn't have made the jokes. But were ten people outside the beltway influenced by her comments? What's interesting about the fuss is that she managed to offend many serious Christians in such different ways. For some it was just that she was criticizing her husband (which is a complaint I find more compelling than most). For others it was the horse joke. The part most off-putting to me in my initial viewing was the "Desperate Housewives" plug. I wasn't excited by that show getting a national advertisement, but I didn't include that complaint in my post because a) apparently Amy Welborn has watched and liked the show and her judgement is worth something and b) I haven't even seen the show so it would raise the ol' blog to a new level of hypocrisy to comment on that.

 posted by TSO @ 14:38 
 
 


 
Long Post.

Received my Catechism of Trent from TAN last week. It has the whiff of the ancient about it, so stern and consolingly sure of itself. The Church has become confused. The coverleaf suggests this is not a church ashamed of its role. There’s no hedging about how "it would be presumptuous for us to wield authority or be dogmatic". We can't all major in theology down here, nor discern everything we need to discern. We need the Church to be authoritative. And this is not done, I believe, in an egotistical way but in a way that is for our own good. We can plainly see how things have gone since the Church became our buddy rather than our Mother and teacher.

I love to revel in those old texts, like the Douay-Rheims of Haydock’s vintage, or the dulcet text of the old Roman Catechism of St. Charles. It is, perhaps, a guilty pleasure, since we are called to follow our leaders today and not our leaders five hundred years. Trying to live in a past era is a masturbatory exercise since we are here to serve God and neighbor, and one can scarcely minister if you’re living in the 16th century. Gotta be on the same page of the hymnal. (As an old school nun said when one of us fifth graders complained about a sermon - she said that "even though you don't like it, it could be that someone else needed to hear that very sermon today.") God has shown his flexibility over the eons and we who make up the Body of Christ can be no less flexible. But for nostalgia purposes it is a reverie worth getting lost in for awhile. It is part of heritage, part of who we are now, just as our family ancestors provide some of our physicality.

Our pastor gave a sermon on the Feast of the Ascension that I wish, like many of his sermons, he would put online. The gist of it is how Christianity differs from, say, Islam. Christ, naturally. But also there is a core difference in the concept of God. We don't much understand the Trinity, he says, so we don't emphasize it. But the idea is that Three Persons are so in love that their boundaries become blurred. The concept of the Trinity is of a "relational" God. He said that anytime we begin to view God as being other than relational, we end up in tyranny, with a desire to force our views on others. 

He said that we've botched many opportunities by seeing the Church and Western European culture as one in the same. We failed to respect other cultures. He said that China was open to Christianity during the 17th century but Jesuit missionaries were arrogant and rejected anything in Chinese culture that did not conform easily to Western European culture. 

I'd hadn't heard that before. I thought one of the strengths of Catholicism was its willingness to respect and somewhat accommodate cultural differences. Much that was pagan has been baptized; the Christmas tree and the wedding ring come immediately to mind. These were of German and Roman culture that were explicitly pagan but the Church respected the symbols enough not to reject them out of hand but to "baptize" them.

But it was a decent answer to my mother's Mother's Day query. She said it seemed Christ mission wasn't so successful given that only one or two billion of six billion on earth are Christians. But I summarized Monsignor's sermon for her and said that that is the fault of Christians, not Christ.

 posted by TSO @ 12:21 
 
 


 
Short Stories

I remember the Nosferatu viewing at an all night camp outing. I recall watching it and then going outside in the dark-dew’d three a.m. grass. There was that air of unreality about the world, created in part by the art I’d just seen. The air was crisp and dangerous and seemed capable of any sort of nasty surprise. Back when I was a kid it was poor form not to stay up all night when you could stay up all night. It was like refusing to thank your sweet aunt for the Christmas fruit cake. So we stayed up all night in the face of cowardly fatigue and dawn’s slow begetfulness.
__

It was pre-Christmas, that time of year of darkness allievated by so many colored lights, when Maria gave me a gift pack of Life-Savers that formed a kind of book. I was so astonished by it, by her unprecendented generousity, and astonished by her wanting me to be her boyfriend. I was twelve or thirteen and predictably behind the curve. Still even at that age of incoahticies I understood that I liked the lighter skinned and the fuller-bodied. She was thin and dark-haired and I thought her too much like my thin, dark-haired sister. I wonder how many romances are failed by someone looking too much like family, although I’ve since discovered that breasts are pretty much a universal attractant.


 posted by TSO @ 12:14 
 
 


 
Gone Fishin'

   -a very special 'Fictional Monday' (say like 'a very special Frasier')

(Note: This was written a few years back. It stands up better than most of my old stuff.)

I quit my job after 17 years (3,621 work days) at the moment I realized I still had exactly 3,621 more work days left to go. The fact was too staggering to bear for a mere mortal. Other than my boss and co-workers and the nature of the work itself, I liked Orange Corporation. I liked the food at cafeteria, liked the hours, liked the credit union rates. 

It was 2:48pm on a Friday when I made the life-altering decision. It was easy. I was surprised at how easy! I double-clicked on the “Word” icon on my desktop and a blank note popped up at my command. I typed the following double-spaced: 

"Effective two weeks hence, April 24th at 5:00pm, I proclaim my liberation from Orange Corp. After 730 meetings, 4,804 cups of stale coffee and a string of bosses who made the Marquis De Sade look like a hale fellow well-met, I am ready to call it quits." 

I dated it and slipped it under my bosses keyboard, next to a Post-it note that said cryptically, “follow-up on new Follow-Up strategy”. 

The notion of freedom was intoxicating and heady. The spring mornings leading up to the 24th felt pregnant with possibility. At work I was the Dead Man Walking, seeming alive but soon to be cut off from everyone’s consciousness. But at home I was Alive Man Waking. Instead of listening to news and pontificating on what was wrong with the world, I was listening to old Statler’s Brothers tapes and eating cinnamon toast with Captain Crunch. I even made some French Toast which I hadn’t done since sick days during high school. That last morning I drove to work it was freakishly warm and sunny. I rolled down the windows of the Mustang and sang Motley Crew's “School’s Out For Summer” at the top of my lungs. 

Though I quit Orange, I could not afford to retire completely. For the same reason adults dress up in costumes and become someone else at Halloween parties, I decided to change careers completely. I bought a pair of jean overalls I found at a surplus store and picked up some motor oil at 7-11 and smeared it all over my clothes. I let my face gain the bristly consistency of a 3-day beard. I was ready. Ready for my interview with “Kreiger Auto Repair” in a small town off the outskirts of Columbus. 

“What ‘sperience you got in car repair?” he asked gruffly after motioning to sit down on a chair that showed some of its stuffing. 

“I have owned cars for nearly 20 years (I paused to let that sink in) and I have sucessfully opened the hoods even of cars where it is tough to find the latch. I have also changed the occasional tire, put on the spare. I’ve been expert at diagnosing and correcting deficient levels of gasoline – I would say that is my specialty because few people are better at judging how much gas they have left than I.” 

“You’ll need training...”

 posted by TSO @ 10:15 
 
 


 
This will appeal to all of three people...(I hope Rich Leonardi is reading):

You May Be From Cincinnati If...



Instead of saying "What?" or "Huh?" you say, "Please?"
Your favorite convenience store sounds like a labor union (United Dairy Farmers).
You can't hear the words "Mike Brown" without getting angry.
You honestly believe that Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
You somehow have a soft spot for Marge Schott.
You don't think it weird that everyone has an Uncle Al.
Your favorite Coney Island isn't near New York.
You like Nick Clooney better than George Clooney.
You know how Jerry Springer got his start.
You know what a pony keg is.
You have friends and neighbors with names like Machenheimer, Guckenberger, Schlottman, Schoenling, and Schweitering.
You know what "brats" and "metts" are. 
You know that cars (like eggs) are cheaper in the country.
You know that Cherokee Motors was located at 7505 Vine (where Paddock meets Vine at the big Indian sign).
You think a mixed marriage is when an East Sider marries a West Sider.
You know the difference between Hudy and "Who Dey."
Someone says "Norwood" and you automatically laugh (unless you actually live there).
You hate Cleveland, even though you've probably never been there.
You think Kentucky is only slightly more civilized than Afghanistan.
You know in which state the Greater Cincinnati Airport is located.


 posted by TSO @ 14:27 
 
May 6, 2005   


 
What's New? 

my level of interest (1-10 scale)

Michael Jackson case = 0
Paula Abdul = -1
runaway bride = 6.5
Charles & Camilla = 1.5
Tom Delay's woes = 3
Laura Bush's speech = 8.5
John Bolton = 3
my level of irritation
At military lying about details concerning Pat Tillman's death: 6.5
At Lynndie England taking the fall alone for Abu Graib: 8.5


 posted by TSO @ 14:22 
 
 


 
For the Business Minded

BusinessWeek notices blogs.

There are some 8,700,000 blogs now and I feel confident that this blog is in the top 2.8 million quality-wise. So if you read 2.8 million blogs a day and aren't reading this one then shame on you.

 posted by TSO @ 10:52 
 
 


 
Sideways Arrow for Sideways

It's surely ironic to use a movie analogy to say that most movies don't work for me. 

But there are few more memorable scenes than when Tom Hank's character in "Splash" says that he doesn't "get" love, it just wasn't a capability he was born with. And that's how I feel about most critically-acclaimed modern movies. Maybe I wasn't born with the capacity to enjoy them. The English Patient and that Rosewood movie come immediately to mind. Citizen Kane, that's the name. 

It could be merely a lack of taste I'll admit. Terry Teachout, the arbiter of good taste, raved about Sideways, calling it the best of the year. I didn't think the film was terrible, just okay. There was one truly magical scene, an exchange in the middle of the movie concerning vintages of wine that was literal and metaphorical and lyrical. But that was two minutes out of a 2+ hour movie.

The characters were familiar to me and in that sense the filmmakers did a great job of recreating reality. And there was a train-wreck aspect to the lives of the two main characters that certainly made it watchable. I'll be curious to see what a real movie maven like Ham o' Bone thinks of this one.

 posted by TSO @ 07:49 
 
 


 
LB's Speech

I'm fascinated by some of the backlash Laura Bush is receiving for her speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. As a certifiable C-Span junkie ("certifiable" & "C-Span junkie" are redundant btw) I was delighted by the show. It's like crack-cocaine to someone who likes comedy and politics. 

But a local Christian radio station guru was aghast, saying that for a spouse to publically criticize the other in public is wrong, even if it is a joke. Which does resonate with what a holy Dominican priest once said, cautioning against making jokes like 'old ball 'n chain' or anything deprecatory towards our better half. My take on the horse joke was that it was harmless.

Robert George of "Ragged Thots" links to Michelle Malkin's post and says: "Laura Bush: Uniter Not a Divider!!! Liberals without a sense of humor meet conservatives without a sense of humor. Hijinks ensue!!"

Now THAT'S entertainment.

Update: Additional thoughts at the bottom of this post.

 posted by TSO @ 07:23 
 
 


 
Just received...

... the all-time, all-star, best spam title ever received in the history of spam:

Re: buddhism Pamprin Maximum Cramp Relief
Rich.

Re: the "re:" -- how many people have sent an email titled "buddhism Pamprin Maximum Cramp Relief"?

 posted by TSO @ 07:12 
 
 


 
Month of May

It seems disloyal to mention AAM without mentioning the obvious, that this is a month dedicated to Mary. The blue sidebar on the right was originally intended as a tribute to John Paul the Great, given his love for Mary and his saying the "Totus Tuus", but I'll keep it through May.

 posted by TSO @ 15:07 
 
May 5, 2005   


 
Let's Toast Alcohol Awareness Month

I just became aware via signage in the gym that it's "Alcohol Awareness Month". Now there's a month I can get behind! (Though "Alcohol Appreciation Month" would be preferable.) In honor, here are a few ale quotes you may appreciate:

In period of English history, people lived in small groups, but had yet to develop villages. There was little reason to do so, as most goods needed, such as bread, could be created on the farm. Beer was a different story. Beer was complicated enough, and required enough equiptment that it could not be made at home. Therefore, villages were formed around breweries. This lead in short order to Feudalism, Adam Smith, ending in the Bud Ice Penguin. Quite remarkable really. --David Frazier, Morehead State University

The immense importance of a pint of ale to a common person should not be overlooked.
--Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, 18th Century

He was a wise man who invented beer. 
--Plato

This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord has intended a more divine form of consumption. Let us give praise to our maker and glory to His bounty be learning about beer. 
--Friar Tuck 

From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world. 
--Saint Arnold of Metz, The patron saint of brewers

You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are. 
--Colonel Adolphus Busch

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. 
--Dave Barry 


 posted by TSO @ 14:51 
 
 


 
On Golden Pond Eras

I posted this comment elsewhere concerning the common disparagement that previous eras were just as bad as today:

My friend Ham o' Bone and I discuss this theme a lot. He disagrees, but my take is that there are differences between people and therefore there actually could be differences between eras. Granted, the differences may look slight in God's eyes, but there is a world of difference between, say, myself and Mother Teresa. And eras are just collections of people. Nothing more, nothing less. We see variation in intelligence of different people and variation in their physical characteristics. Why should there not be variations in holiness? Physically people were much shorter two hundred years ago. Is it so great a leap to imagine that - on the whole - some previous societies might be holier than ours, even allowing for the glow nostalgia offers?

Part of my reaction is that I hear my mom and others say there are no saints really - we just don't know their sins. But if there are no saints than there really are no models, and if there are no models why should we much try? And if societies don't get better or worse, than why should we try as a society to get any better? In the OT there are differences i think. Nineveh, versus say Sodom. Nineveh, to our shock, actually repented in sack cloth and ashes. 

I like to think people are influenced by leaders, especially back when we weren't so individualistic, back when we were more clannish. And so that means a society could vary with how good a leader was.

I guess the bottom line is that I don't believe in relativism. It's a fad nowadays to say that Western culture is no better than the primitive cultures, that it would be best, for example, to have let the Aztecs continue human sacrifices rather than have Spanish come. I'm kind of allergic to that.


 posted by TSO @ 10:49 
 
 


 
Song From The Past

I was singing Elvin Bishop's classic "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" while cutting the grass when it occurred to me: we seem to give God scant credit in his ability to charm. He, like the girl that changed Elvin's heart after a million other girls, can woo us, as well as others we think incapable of being moved. 

One of the most affecting lines is when Bishop sings of previous girls: "I didn’t care how much they cried, no sir / Their tears left me cold as a stone." This resonates personally because my wife pulverizes me with her tears in a way other girls I'd dated didn't. Were her tears different? Maybe the girl who hooked the songwriter did so not by flattery, or her body, or bedroom behavior but by her tears? Can we be moved by His tears enough to see our neighbor's cries as His own?

Bishop continues, "Free and on my own, that’s the way I used to be / But since I met you baby, love’s got a hold on me". 

The song is so mournful it suggests the songwriter still cherishes the past (i.e. his sin). Does he remember his former idols with nostalgia and not regret? The imagery conveyed is one of binding, not loosening: love's got a "hold on him" and freedom is mentioned only in connection with his past. Is he not fully free yet? Is he fully in love?

 posted by TSO @ 07:30 
 
 


 
Doing What We Can

Please don't fraternally correct my fraternal correction to Nathan who fraternally corrects Jeff Miller for fraternally correcting progressives.

 posted by TSO @ 07:09 
 
 


 
Oh my.

 posted by TSO @ 11:30 
 
May 4, 2005   


 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

World Middle Age Day! picture it: 
- everybody brings lawn chairs to sit on, forget the ground. 
- an audible mass grunt when everybody gets up off the ground after kneeling after Communion.
- rotator cuff injuries from waving national flags. Competing and inventive solutions to attach them to the lawn chairs. 
- an epidemic of sunburned scalps. - Therese Z

Even my own mother got more than one [vote] for that dashed off piece of doggerel with lines like "A mouse is a mouse, is a mouse/ As a spouse is a spouse is a spouse/ and a louse is a louse, is a louse..." For Pete's sake, rouse me when it's over. Sounds like part of the theme song from Mr. Ed. You'd think a female would have found room for a line full of 'blouses'... All right, the winners are Terry Southard and Susan. Yes, Susan, my student. You people. A liberal, filmophiliac (hell, I don't even know if she's a Christian) throws in a line about St. Peter and you all suck it up like a largemouth bass after a jellyworm. - Bill Luse of Apologia. I was laughing so hard over the Mr. Ed reference that I didn't even catch his use of the word "rouse" the first time I read it. That's the mark of greatness: it bears fruit upon re-reading. 

I truly believe that my soul was saved, in large part, by a celibate gay pope-hating liberal democrat liberation theology Jesuit.  I can't talk about what he does without identifying him, but as much as I disagree with him on almost everything, I also know that he's a remarkable person through whom God has done great work.  And I don't even want to think where I might be if our paths hadn't crossed. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

It is exactly my sense of the Church. Dusty, messy, unkempt in some places. Needing some changes. But THERE. Existing. Holding the "real bones." Not started afresh by someone who had a better idea. Not a sterile McMansion somewhere gated away from the rest of the world. The Church has nooks and crannies everywhere. Odd little rooms of differing devotions and prayers. And Lord knows, she has stables that need cleaning out. But I prefer her, with her "real bones" to any new place I've ever seen. - MamaT of Summa Mamas

We held her hand and stroked her head. During those hours, one of the things I did was to chant, in Latin, some of the most ancient hymns of the Church. One of the chants I used was the "Victimae Paschali Laudis," which is the ancient proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. There, as I saw before my eyes the deadly work of the Culture of Death, I proclaimed the victory of life. "Life and death were locked in a wondrous struggle," the hymn declares. "Life's Captain died, but now lives and reigns forevermore!" - Fr. Frank Pavone on the last hours of Terri Schiavo's life

Where Sunday in seraphic light
I knelt, as full of grace as most,
And stuck my tongue out at the priest:
A fresh roost for the Holy Ghost.
-excerpt of X. J. Kennedy poem via Steven Riddle

I was regaling the young folk with tales of the good ol’ days. Back when we took SATs and ACTs without Kaplan prep sessions, special accomodations and counseling to help us work through our test anxiety. We paid our fees and showed up with two #2 pencils. And we liked it. I don’t recall any parents being overly concerned. Nor do I remember any of my friends getting all worked up into frazzle. Those days are over...I, someone who performs better on tests than in real life, would find a bit of performance anxiety in being the only student under the proctor's eye. -Ellyn of "Oblique House", on her daughter's need to take the SAT alone with a proctor

I ate some Doritos, then looked at some weblogs. Weblogs make me grumpy. Then I had to do a project for my nutrition class. It is no fun to do a nutrition project while you are having a handful of Doritos and a Coke for lunch. The nutrition project made me grumpy. - m'Lynn of "Scattershot Directly"

In a way, pre-V2 Catholicism was both realistic about [our tendency to hold something back from God], but also seemed to sell out on the matter, at least as popularly received. It seemed to be this mix of holding up heroic holiness and sacrifice as the ideal, but understanding that most of us aren't going to make it, and evolving structures of life and worship that took this into account, lest we all fall into despair at our failures, simply give up, and walk away. Hence the legalism, hence the very specific understanding of exactly how much of Mass you could attend and still have it "count." Given human nature, it was a strength, I think, but it was also a weakness, as the rapid flux after the Council shows - we've often discussed this mystery - how everything went crazy so fast, in really just a matter of five years. - Amy Welborn

Besides the juridical system of public penance, Bishop Kallistos tells us that sacramental confession also draws on the practice of spiritual counsel. The Gerontikon and the Apothigmata emphasized the importance of the dislosure of thoughts to one's spiritual elder...And we can imagine sacramental confession as both the law court and hospital, as coming into the presence of both Christ as Judge and Christ as Good Physician. Perhaps I can suggest that distortion results when we try to identify confession with only one or the other, and we end up with a practice that is either hopelessly subjective or too legalistic. - Neil on Amy's blog

 posted by TSO @ 08:37 
 
 


 
Current Read

I'm reading "Pope St. Pius X" by F.A.Forbes. What a wonderful, caring soul he was. A true shepherd. 

It's ironic that when Popes had greater influence and we needed excellent ones we didn't get them (say back in the 15th & 16th centuries). And now that they have, sadly, lost much influence we receive such great ones. Perhaps it is not so hard to understand after all? When the Church is weak in the world she is strong. When the Church is temporally strong, she is weak. 

At the time of Pope Pius, a major problem was Jansenism. (St. Vincent de Paul once said that "this new error of Jansenism is one of the most dangerous that has ever troubled the Church." Which is remarkable statement given all the errors that came before.) 

In light of that Pope St. Pius X urged more frequent Communion: 

"Holy Communion is the shortest and surest way to Heaven," said Pius X to the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. "There are others, innocence, for instance, but that is for little children; penance, but we are afraid of it; generous endurance of the trials of life, but when they come we weep and ask to be spared. Once for all, beloved children, the surest, easiest, shortest way is by the Eucharist. It is so easy to approach the holy table, and there we taste the joys of Paradise."
Another quote from the book makes one wistful for childhood: 
"I have found it much easier," writes one who has had much experience, "to prepare little children than those who are older--the preparation is much more objective than subjective. It is more a realization of how lovable, how desirable, how loving our Lord is, than a preoccupation of how they can make themselves worthy - or less unworthy - to receive Him. The actual first communion appears to the little ones as the very loving embrace of a much-loved Father; to the older ones it is more a welcome to a loved and honored guest, with - if I may so put it - the preoccupations of a hostess."


 posted by TSO @ 07:50 
 
 


 
Asking the Tough Questions

One of the reasons I watch Don Imus is he'll say anything. He recently had on Mary Higgins Clark and her author/daughter Carol Higgins Clark, who is engaged to be married:

IMUS: You are Roman Catholic, right? Like this new Pope?

MARY: Yes we like this Pope very much.

IMUS: Are you cafeteria Catholics? 

(Carol wears a puzzled brow, doesn't know what he means.)

MARY: No we accept all the teachings...(explains to Carol what 'cafeteria catholic' means)   [an aside: given that that term is bandied about heavily by the orthodox, it can't be a good sign if you've never heard the term 'cafeteria Catholic' can it? Might you be one? I'm just sayin'. (Have mercy, did I just say "I'm just sayin'"? That's Nancy Nall's phrase. I digress...).]

IMUS: So Carol have you engaged in pre-marital relations with your fiancee? 

(Carol looks shocked. Fails to answer for a long time. Mother comes to rescue.)

MARY: That's not something my daughter would do.

CAROL: I can't believe you asked me that.

IMUS: Well I wanted to make sure you weren't a cafeteria Catholic...

 posted by TSO @ 07:02 
 
 


 
More DLCR Emails Between Conscriptees



I recently received a "Substance Free Workplace Program: an employee's guide", and yet nowhere in it do I see where I can get free substances. I think a program that offers free alcohol is an awesome employee benefit, but the communication they distributed is extremely poor. I hope they offer Guinness!
Reply: 
I think the intent is to convey a workplace that is free of any substance whatsoever--a big fat hairy pile o' nuthin, not even antimatter--kind of like a universe-sized Dirt Devil got turned on. See, the pamphlet makes sense now, doesn't it?
Response to a corporate email urging us to "reflect the brand":
Doctors diagnosed Robert's condition as "too-much-reflecting-iopia", for Robert had "reflect(ed) the brand" and "reflect(ed) customization". The solution was to attempt to be himself as much as possible and not reflect the hell anything. He was given experimental anti-reflecting drugs and today is a fine, upstanding man with 2.3 children and a split-level appropriately furnished. Robert works for a small company that "really doesn't reflect anything". He avoids mirrors.
***

Entries from the Name the New Computer Server contest:
Circe, Cyclops, Scylla, Charybdis
Earth, Wind, Fire, Rain
Moe, Curly, Larry, Shemp
Howdy, Bob, Clarabell, Flubadub
Bonzai, Lizardo, Bigboote, Penny
MiamiDade, PalmBeach, Broward, Volusia
Minos, Virgil, Francesca, Barbariccia
Scheiss, Busen, Verkehr, hoelle
Disturbed, Loners, Chat, Room
Kubla, Khan, Xanadu, Paradise
Shakespeare, Bacon, Dante, Cervantes
36, 23, 34, 73 (note: the IQ can round out the quartet...)
Jewel, Christina, Brittany, Jessica
War, Famine, Pestilence, Death
Regarding another:
Uh, was this note as uncomprehensible to you as it was to me? First you got this guy named Walter Pingleton, which is fun to say aloud, and he is responsible for 'distributing offshore products globally', which is just where you'd expect offshore products to be distributed right? But how do these products stay dry? Whadda we have a bunch of them stuck out in the Gulf of Mexico somewhere? Also our so-called global strategy, which doesn't include Puerto Rico by the way, does include aliens. So is our 'global strategy' now outdated? Shouldn't it be called our 'galatical strategy'? 
Original email: 
Hi all,

Just to help confuse things a little, we are hiring Bob Webb into the Keynote team. Brian's notes ID is: Webbb2. Thought I'd give you a heads up to be careful on addressing emails to me. Mine is Webbb1.
Reply:
Poor bbbastard. 
Email: 
Ah yes...I say as I endure that sweet form of torture, tracking my peers careers. It does seem a bit unseemly, to see my friends in these glamourous positions and making glam-pay. I have the proverbial mixed emotions. I never meant to underachieve, I just meant to over-save.
Reply: 
Having taken gigantic hits in my tech portfolio I have finally attained the peace, serenity and acceptance of the probability of working well into my declining years. Having pissed away the better part of my '20s I have long been in the position of seeing my age peers become captains of industry while my income peers came of age when Bananarama and Wang Chung were rising with a bullet. When I get too old to give a shit about this job--oh wait, too late.... when I get old enough for the brand-embossed gold watch, I am going to apply for a job driving a bread truck or a chip route. Even an 85-year old can probably tote a case of potato chips across the sidewalk to the local bodega in the Linden Area (unless they're densely packed, like Pringles).
Email: 
The latest thing in marketing is called "covert marketing". Sony is using it to sell their new cell phone/digital camera. They hire people to be "tourists" that hang out at various attractions and ask people to take their picture "next to Mickey" or "in front of the geyser". Of course the real purpose is to get people to try out the new camera without knowing it is an ad campaign. Apparently the beer companies have been doing the same thing for quite a while. If you run into a gorgeous babe at a bar exclaiming in a stage whisper "I love men who drink Axolotl Ale", chances are she is a shill trying to sell the beer. I'm going to see if I can get a job covertly selling Preparation H. I could ride buses all day and exclaim "Man, it sure feels good to sit down again. Before I found Preparation H, I had to stand up and hang on whether there were seats open or not" 
Email: 
We have been asked to bring our own TP or "hold it" until we get home so that we can meet out consumption reduction targets. 
reply: 
I was told to wear my winter parka to work because the heat was going to be turned off until the economy turns around.
reply2: 
Our elevators won't move until they are full. Yesterday I had to wait in the elevator 20 minutes until there were 6 other people that wanted to go from the 5th floor to the 7th. Cha Ching
Sad email: 
Yours truly is getting his 15 minutes of fame, but it's not the kind of fame that one generally wants. I am one of the unlucky 100 bastards and bastardesses getting their pink slip. Here's how it went (with a little embellishment): On Thursday, at 3:15pm I received a call from the Veep's secretary asking if I could meet with the Veep at 3:30pm. This has happened 0 times before so I wasn't freaked out, but I was worried about the smell of bourbon (Early Times) on my breath. I drank two more toddies, placed the fifth back in my desk drawer, and then sucked on a peanut butter spoon for a couple of minutes. Arrived at the Veep's door at 3:31pm, the nitrogen-oxygen-hydrogen compound busy destroying neural cells - at least something was working like it should in this godforsaken place. Veep: Come on in. This is Sarah from HR. D.: Hria, Shrah! (Act sober, I thought, as the Scottish brogue threatened to give me away.) Sarah: Nice to meet you. (To Veep) Did you notice the new decor of the Executive Room... Veep: It's got a French Colonial feel to it now. D.: That's frrrrreeedom not Ffffrrenchhhhh! (Good, that almost sounded sober - don't roll the r's next time.) What followed was a tortuous 5 minute discussion about nothing. Message communicated: we have information that is bad for you, bad to you, and we are trying to make it easier on ourselves. Veep: Dave, I'm sorry to say that we are going to have to let you go. The leadership no longer believes that the market is going to recover this year and possibly the next.
Sickness engulfed. I had just enough time to grab the candy jar on his desk, only partially full of gummy worms, there was enough room for the meager contents of my stomach, consisting entirely of Early Times and gastric juices. I'm trying to lose weight, but one cannot survive without liquids. D.: Sorrrrry. I'm just surprrrised, being the senior technical manager on the team. Veep: I had to get my FTE costs under a certain amount, in fact, you are not getting a raise this year as well. D.: You suck! At this point, the HR rep began to feel useful, putting a hand on my shoulder, she tried to shhh me into submission. Sarah: D., we don't expect this to be easy for you! But please be professional. Veep: Yeah D., we still expect you to support all of your duties through the next 60 days. I want you to know that you have my utmost respect. D.: Eat $h1t! At this point, I noticed two new thick-neck fellows in the office. The last thing I remember was the ceiling, the bloody letter opener, and the bleeding scratch marks on my left wrist...


 posted by TSO @ 14:19 
 
May 3, 2005   


 
Power of the Blog!

Wow! This blog stuff really works. What good news!

 posted by TSO @ 08:57 
 
 


 
It's A Flat World After All

Read review of Thomas Friedman's latest book, "The World is Flat". The message partly is that outsourcing is inevitable, so we may as well relax and enjoy it. Plus to a certain extent it's put-up or shut-up time in showing whether we care for all of humanity or just those within our borders. But the global economy lives off a fire-in-your-belly kind of hunger (to mix metaphors) and it is to the hungry (i.e. the Chinese, the Indians) to whom will eventually go the spoils. There is justice in that, of course, but labor gets abused when there is too much supply, and as India & China fully come on line that will happen. Here's an excerpt: 

Thirty years ago, [Bill Gates] tells Friedman, if you had to choose between being born a genius in Mumbai or Shanghai and an average person in Poughkeepsie, you would have chosen Poughkeepsie because your chances of living a prosperous and fulfilled life were much greater there. ''Now,'' Gates says, ''I would rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in Poughkeepsie.''

Friedman describes his honest reaction to this new world while he's at one of India's great outsourcing companies, Infosys... "But my eye kept . . . telling me something else: 'Oh, my God, there are just so many of them, and they all look so serious, so eager for work. And they just keep coming, wave after wave. How in the world can it possibly be good for my daughters and millions of other young Americans that these Indians can do the same jobs as they can for a fraction of the wages?' "


 posted by TSO @ 08:30 
 
 


 
Not So Subtle Distinction

If Nearer, My God, to Thee were written today it would be titled Nearer, My God, to Me.

 posted by TSO @ 08:00 
 
 


 
From the Eastern Catholic Perspective

Pastor writes in bulletin of a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church:

Please remember our new Ecumenical Pontiff, Benedict XVI, the Pope of Rome in your prayers...He may not be as close to Americans as was Pope John Paul the Great, but may learn to deal with the American Catholic Church. He speaks English quite well. There will be Holy Cards available when they are printed similar to the ones which we distributed in memory of Pope John Paul the Great. Remember, he more we acclaim the term "Great" to Pope John Paul the Great's name, the sooner it will become recognized by Rome and become permanent.


 posted by TSO @ 07:56 
 
 


 
God's Proof-of-Purchase Seal

A beautiful image came to me at Mass the other day (which recalls the necessity of sometimes just being there - if 90% of work or parenting is just “being there” then perhaps there’s some of that in prayer). I was distracted and not praying well. And Jesus said: "I have scars". His wounds in his side and feet and wrists. His creation scarred him. Imagine that: God Himself has scars! He didn’t come through life unscathed and nor should I expect to either. There is a great solidarity in his wounds. His scars are his Coat of Arms, his Proof-of-Love seals. I realize anew that it's worth it.

 posted by TSO @ 07:11 
 
 


 
Blogdentities

Fr. Jim of "Dappled Things" is asking readers what they like most about his blog. And I responded saying his theology and sermons. And I got to thinking how obvious that is in retrospect. He went to school for God knows how long. His strength is his knowledge of theology and Scripture. It's not a surprise that that is what I like most about his blog.

Then I thought of Steven Riddle and his near encyclopedic knowledge of literature. He makes me want to read Henry James! Camassia's thrilling truth-seeking? Jeff Miller? Highlarious comedy! Bill Luse's hard, clear thinking? And I could go on and on about the specific charms of individual bloggers. And it occurred to me (oh happy fault!) that light, self-indulgent posts are my strength. Like the dog position post. This is pleasing because these are the type of things I most enjoy writing and posting. First, they take almost no time to write, unlike the more thought-provoking posts where I try to make an argument. Second, they put me in a better mood because I'm not focusing on problems, be they the problems of the church or self or society or you-name-it...

 posted by TSO @ 07:06 
 
 


 
Journal Excerpts

8-17-98: Unsteady I am, athwart the upper walkway, on a warm summer-fallish day, a day Summer is seeking a quick release from your handshake because she is restless, you can see it in her eyes. She has that look; she’s looking over your shoulder, perhaps with a smallish fear. She has her coat on, she will not be staying, but she’s her usual effusive self, just a bit restrained. Summer is turning to fall, by degrees, like a young princess that begins wrinkling and greying. And it was there on the walkway, looking over the expanse of immaculately landscaped grounds, that I saw R. walking in her usual way, sort of a tripping motion, all starts and false starts, head cocking and uncocking as she ambled and rambled beside her Marine-shaved companion, a guy with all the excess motion of a turtle. R. always had that deer-like quality, her longish dark hair abruptly bobbing up at some imagined sound, always querulously testing, sniffing. She had the ungainly walk that is as signature as fingerprints. 

8-19-98: My interests are as estoteric and boring to the population as a hermit’s. Perhaps that’s why I am interested in those subjects – they are off the beaten path. Thoreau was an emblem of my misspent late youth - he was my hero, along with Mac O’Grady, an eccentric golfer who spent his summer sleeping in a box (to save money). I was intrigued by the stories of those who never sold out, who were able to be true to themselves not by earning more than other people, but by spending less. It seemed a neat trick, a sweet way to beat ‘the man’. Everybody into the pool, (the pool of work), but just maybe I could spend under the limit and quietly collect enough money to retire young. Maybe I could shock the establishment by not playing the game. Tis no wonder then that I saw Bone as the living embodiment of these ideals. I was impressed and amazed at his frugality. Even he though, a gargantuan saver, eventually realized that you can’t beat the Man at that game, that the business world has it geared that peak producers (i.e. those in their 30’s and 40’s) will not be lost to retirement. Bone, now advancing into his 30’s, is still apparently years away from retirement, and this apparently has fueled this new ambition. He now has decided to play the Man’s game, to become management, to burn his hours in effigy to the C language. He’s given up the study of theology, of music, of the arts….he expects to be able to come back to them when he’s ready. But maybe they won’t be there to greet him when he finally returns.

*

11-27-98: My nose itches. I can’t think past my nose. 

*

12-16-98: I’ve given up the peniscentric way of life. 

*

With regard to St. John Chrysostom’s – well, it’s apt to quote that old saying about faith in God in general: “if you don’t understand, no explanation is possible, if you do understand, no explanation is necessary”. St. John’s, Byzantine rite, is the fullest expression of worship of God I can imagine. Incense, music, icons, - everything is there to proclaim and express our belief in the Kingship of God. I know it is fashionable now to dimiss anything physical as ‘lessor’, but I for one proclaim and participate in God made visible. 

* 

12-19-98: My greatest fear is religion as a hobby. Let it be authentic or nothing at all; Never let it degenerate into entertainment . Let it be real contact with God or let it be. Let me do it for Him and not for me. He is the only game in town, the reason for being, the reason for every action & reaction.

 posted by TSO @ 06:25 
 
 


 
Random Thought

A mass exodus of dissidents from the church is unlikely. I know if I want someone to leave my cubical checking my watch or looking impatient only encourages them to stay. Was it Twain who said he'd never belong to a club that would have him as a member? Dissidents, by definition, want to belong to clubs who don't want them as a member. What the heck can you protest against within Unitarianism or even Episcopalianism? 

No, the ones who may fall from the Church are the ones who don't know the treasure they have, the ones insufficiently catechized. The Richard McBriens of the world we shall always have with us - the dear soul down the street who doesn't know any better is the one who will leave.

 posted by TSO @ 22:38 
 
May 2, 2005   


 
Updates

Ham o' Bone has an excellent post on love up at his blog. Also, the satirical News You Can't Use was updated with imagined Jack Chick comments on Dan Brown.

 posted by TSO @ 15:04 
 
 


 
Insider's Guide to Our Dog's Sleep Positions

It's been awhile (at least a few days) since my last S.I.P. and it would be a waste to let my wife's careful catalog of our German Shepherd's sleeping positions go to, well, waste. Without further ado:

Alligator dog - this is when he is resting on his stomach, his full five feet length in a straight position. His long snout and large black nose gives this pose its name.


Crescent dog - here we see him curled slightly in the shape of Pillsbury's finest.


Circle dog - here he's tightly curled, tail to nose, in a circular position. 


Carpetbagger Dog - not a pose but a tendency to relocate to where you were sleeping after you get up.


Flat dog - here he lies on his side (colloquial usage: flatamaran).


Centerfold dog - he's flat on his back, package to the wind.

And some non-sleeping descriptions:
Necktie dog - sits alert his with his neck craned as if wearing a necktie.


Begasaurus Rex - self-explanatory.


The Flying Nun - ears up! (see pictorial here).


Crazy dog - occurs especially after baths, runs wildly to and fro.


Bucking Bronco - occurs during Crazy dog phase; begins to buck. 


 posted by TSO @ 12:34 
 
 


 
Revised text of wedding vows of the Runaway Bride:

"Do you promise to love, honor, and wear a GPS tracker..."

 posted by TSO @ 07:06 
 
 


 
The Hilarious Story Of Omnis Utriusque Sexus

I was searching the 'net for comments about Harold Skimpole, an intriguing character in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Skimpole is a sort of Henry David Thoreau except that he is unwilling to live simply and is unscrupulous about paying his debts. 

And so I found an article in First Things by Paul Mankowski S.J. (the last good Jesuit*) and he is devastatingly effective in comparing progressives and those who disdain organized religion to Skimpole. 

In my naivety, I'd once wished that our Lord would've been more clear that the Eucharist was intended to be not just a remembrance but truly his Body & Blood, and that there also be a passage making it clear that Peter had the right to pass the keys down. I thought if there were just more in the bible about these issues we could have Christian unity...(Naively or not, I often imagine the world is the way it is because of the fracture of Christendom.)

But Paul Mankowski with help from Chesterton puts it beautifully:

And yet, the objection is frequently made, isn't it the case, once we have a firm and binding document-a genuine letter of St. Paul or a decree of an ecumenical council-that we can simply rely on the plain sense of the text to give us the teaching we need? This intuition is widely held, but the history of the Church shows us that there is no such thing as the plain sense of the text that is universally acknowledged-at least over time. It is simply impossible to lay the flooring of a document so tightly that someone, at some time, will not manage to fall through the cracks.

My favorite illustration of this point is the decree Omnis utriusque sexus of the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215. It holds that everyone, of both sexes, is required to go to confession at least once a year. It was, however, interpreted by a monk named William of Newcastle to mean that yearly penitential duty is incumbent only on hermaphrodites. Now Brother William, obviously, needed someone to point out the error of his ways. His Latin, incidentally, was flawless; the problem with his interpretation is that it was insane.

The upshot is that every article of faith we have, no matter how obvious or how arcane it may appear, has run a gamut of fatal threats throughout the centuries, and has been vouchsafed to us, multa inter alia, by bishops and censors and canonists and judges. As Chesterton points out, if you paint a fence post white, and just leave it alone, it will eventually turn black. In the same way the teachings of the Church have to be reappropriated in every generation-unglamorous work!-and protected from contamination, neglect, and the random predations of those Williams of Newcastle that stalk the pages of the history of doctrine in every age like a recurring nightmare.

* - just a joke

 posted by TSO @ 16:25 
 
May 1, 2005   


 
Beauty to Beauty

The kiss of the morning Irish
singing o’er the shower crash
lilts under the curtain
and out the window
panes into the glen-grasses.

 posted by TSO @ 13:01 
 
 


 
Hope's Not Just a Diamond

The break-strains opening the nuptial march in The Sound of Music are as stirring as anything I’ve ever heard. They’ve come to symbolize to me less the beginning of a human marriage than the start of the wedding feast of Christ, which is to say Heaven. And it’s not coincidental that it follows the Mother Superior’s "Climb Every Mountain" which contain the chilling words, "A dream that will need all the love you can give / Every day of your life for as long as you live." There can be no no mas in love. But the exit/entrance march would feel hollow without the strife. Would Easter be Easter but for the crucifixion? 

One of the most Christian stories found outside the bible is Dickens’s "A Christmas Carol". What a story of hope. My favorite scene is when Scrooge wakes up and rejoices in the mere fact that he is alive. Breathing is an indicator of hope, for breath carries the breathtaking possibility of repentance.

 posted by TSO @ 07:55 
 
 

Yowsa

The slippery slope between the personal and professional just slipped a bit.

We don't know all the facts, but if this guy got fired despite mentioning any names, well then we've reached a new level of arbitrariness.

(HT: Dawn Eden)

  posted by TS @ 10:52  
June 30, 2005 

 
Shelby Foote, R.I.P.

I catch so little news these days that I'm glad Amy linked to this. One of my favorite books is "The Correspondence of Walker Pecy and Shelby Foote". From a commenter on Amy's blog:
Shelby Foote on Walker Percy's conversion to Catholicism:

When Walker told me he was thinking about going into the Catholic Church, we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico on a sort of vacation. And I couldn't believe he would do that. I knew nothing about the Catholic Church. I knew that they had an index of books that people are not supposed to read, and I certainly didn't want him belonging to anything that would do that to you. So I said, "You are a mind in full intellectual retreat," and it's a wonder he ever spoke to me again. He found exactly what he was looking for in the Church. It gave him exactly what he wanted, and it was a great comfort to him when he was dying, and it was at the wellspring of his being, the Church and its teachings, and he was truly devout. He had a lot of trouble, always called himself a bad Catholic, but he got a great deal from it.

Shelby Foote remained Episcopalean by some accounts, but others consider him agnostic.

Their greatest bone of contention was Percy's recent conversion to Roman Catholicism. Foote's initial reaction - yours is "a mind in full intellectual retreat" - stung Percy. Foote believed the move was "cowardly." Worse, "no good practicing Catholic can ever be a great artist." Foote, still active, confessed to a recent interviewer he was "very, very wrong" on this score, even though he remains an agnostic literary modernist.

  posted by TS @ 08:04  
 

 
Various & Sundry

Ham of Bone's latest. So true. I recall being in a Border's purchasing Augustine's "City of God" when the young clerk apparently thought it was a gnostic gospel. He said "now this is a book I'd read. You know the Catholic Church suppressed books like the 'Gospel of Thomas' for centuries." Where do you even begin? 

~~

And an interesting paragraph from National Review:
Some people regard Sharansky as a providential figure, spared death in the Gulag to perform his work now. What does he think? “I long ago stopped asking myself whether God gives us a mission or we give ourselves a mission, in an effort to be worthy of God.” He recalls the prayer that he invented for himself in prison, and mutters a little of it: “Grant me the strength, the power, the intelligence . . . and the patience to leave this jail and reach the Land of Israel in an honest and worthy way.” 

  posted by TS @ 07:46  
 

 
Imagine No Gulf War, It's EZ If You Try

Alternative histories always interest me even if they serve little purpose. Pat Buchanan recently said that he thinks if the U.S. would've stayed out of WWII longer the two evil empires, Russia & Nazi Germany, would've knocked each other silly and weakened the Soviets to the point of preventing Korea and Vietnam and the whole Cold War. 

I've recently been wondering what would've happened if we'd not rolled back Saddam Hussein in 1990. Leaving humanitarian impulses beside, what if there was no Gulf War, as the godfather of paleo-conservatism, Russell Kirk, advised? Knowing Hussein's desire for hegemony and his delusions of grandeur (he still thinks he'll rule Iraq some day) I don't think it's much of a stretch that he'd taken over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East.

Which, on the positive side, would mean we'd have one enemy instead of many. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and Syria are all exporters of suicide bombers to Iraq (and we already know how many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi's). So it would seem easier to fight one crazy dictatorial state than five shrewd terror-sponsoring states.

But on the negative side, there'd be a crazy person in charge of the world's oil supply. And the problem with oil is that filling up our S.U.V. is the least of our problems. Our whole economy runs on it. Trucks use it to get everything everywhere. There is a multiplier effect with oil because it's built into every product we buy. And the worse part about oil is that it's real painful in moving off it. We haven't got a Methadone equivalent and one of the great mysteries of the last twenty years is why the government hasn't funded/given tax breaks to alternative fuel industries. It almost makes a conspiracist out of me. But George Will would say let the market dictate when alternative fueling is needed because the private sector will do it better anyway. A free market has its vagaries.

The other problem with that scenerio is that with all that oil money it surely wouldn't be difficult for him to acquire nuclear weapons. And that, more than the possibility of a global depression, makes you sick. In the nuclear age, any country who gets nuclear weapons becomes exempt from war, at least exempt from being attacked by another nuclear power. You can fight proxy wars as we did with the Soviet Union (Korea & Vietnam) but the tacit agreement was 'no nuclear weapons'. But just as we couldn't go to war with the Soviets, we couldn't go to war with Saddam at that point. So in the end the positive of having just one enemy isn't positive after all.

Update: Great coment from Dan at Lofted Nest:
I remember reading "The Turning Point" by Fritjof Capra and his discussion of Europe approaching the Middle Ages. Their whole culture, he wrote, was based on wood -- wood tools, wood spoons and forks and bowls and plates, wood furniture, wood houses, wood for heat, wood for shaping metal, wood for fishing boats, wood for arrows and on and on. And as population grew, the forests shrank until society reached a turning point. The monarchs took over the forests and the people could no longer make their way without leave of their kings, etc. Society descended into Dark Ages.

Next, Capra started listing everything in modern society that is oil/gas/carbon based -- and it really is an amazing list, everything plastic, transportation, power grids, heating, cooling, farming... and when we run out of oil? Again... expect a dark age for man. It was a scary book & gave me quite an appreciation for just how many eggs we have in the oil basket.

  posted by TS @ 07:40  
 

 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

The last couple of months have been crazy...Dylan has been taking care of me, had heart attack and surgery... and on top of all this I moved..just recently...Dylan is doing good...we both thank everyone for all there prayers..don't give up on him..he has been my right arm since March.. thank you again. - Dylan's (of "more last than star") mom

RCIA, he said, stood for Repelling Catholics In-Advertently. - Dawn Eden, (despite that, congrats to Dawn for entering RCIA!)

Her father died when she was three. Her mother remarried to a non-Catholic man who you find in the story in another place was an alcoholic. All of this provides an interesting backdrop to her fight against the "patriarchy" of the Church. Then there is her bout with polio when she first entered into religious life. Take all of this as a whole then add to it her views against the miraculous, the power of God to intervene...what you are left with is a very human religion of Sr. Joan. Why is she allowed a stage to share this religion with bishops, priests, religious, and laity? This best can be explained by the lack of faith that she enunciates so well for those who think like her. Why do they stay in the Church? Security. - Michael of Annunciations, regarding Sr. Joan Chittister and her recent book 

"Hey, this isn't going to kill the mystique is it?" - Elena of My Domestic Church to her husband, during the birth of their child as the doctor pointed out 'anatomical details' to him

I went to a poet's meeting on a whim a few years ago and the main topic of interest was how to copyright your poems. Some people, back then anyway, were sending their poems into the copyright office, others were mailing their poems to themselves to secure the post office date stamp. They were all worried about sending poetry off to editors who would steal it for themselves. I asked them why they bothered since even good poetry isn't worth a dime and magazines only pay in copies to up their circulation numbers anyway... That didn't go over very well. - Dan of "Lofted Nest"

Speaking as one born into abject poverty (by American standards at least) I have to admit, in my own adulthood, I was far less happy making $60k than I am barely clearing $12k. My life is so much better now that I own a little stuff, instead of being owned by a lot of stuff. On the partisan economic thing, I admit I have always bristled at leftists talking about the poor. Capitalists may not have the right solution, but they do tend to at least see poor folks as capable folks and that means a lot to me. Welfare, as practised in the West, can be soul-deadening.- commenter on Disputations

I'd like to propose [St. John the Baptist] for patron saint of the Internet. John was a herald, a man whose job it was to announce the coming of the King. In essence, that means he was a communicator, first and foremost. Also, that whole "baptism of repentence for the forgiveness of sins" was quite a contrast with what his father Zechariah was up to in the Temple (the "sacrificing of animals for the forgiveness of sins"). It shows he was open to "new technologies". Finally, he was quite a firebrand, so I think he'd be quite at home within the kinds of discussion that sometimes happens within the Internet. I can just see his ears perking up at the mention of a "flame war". - Fr. Dowd on St. Blog's Parish Hall

I plan to one day piss off all my relatives and friends (as well as random St. Bloggers, I suppose) by writing a chapter-by-chapter analysis of that book [Christ the King, Lord of History] and why we're destroying our children's critical faculties and opening them up for a loss of faith, by using that book as the basis of their history education. - commenter on Amy's blog

Brave New World is relentlessly taught at schoolchildren as a warning and yet our society grows more and more like it with each passing decade. Subliminal brainwashing of children on a national scale?? - commenter on Jimmy Akin's site about the "Most Dangerous Books Ever Written"

MOM, turning to me, deadpan: I'm beginning to side with Rev. Phelps. - Dawn Eden report after hearing Billy Graham mentioning Hilary Clinton running the country

Everyone has a conversion story these days; even cradle Catholics, since no one perseveres in the faith from childhood anymore...I was raised in a very devout Baptist home myself. Due to my pride and vanity it almost seems the only way I could be made receptive to the Faith was to languish in dreadful wickedness for a time, so that I could begin to see I needed something far greater than myself. We’ve all went through it, each in our own way. Our lives literally rot away from the inside until something new and beautiful can be made to spring forth from within us...This time a mature faith that, with God’s grace, can face the very world that killed our innocence and wonder the first time. - Franklin Jennings as quoted on "Hallowed Ground"

The RC understanding of baptism and its relation to faith is quite different from the evangelical perspective. In short, the baptized Catholic coming forward in a Graham Crusade would not be taught that she, indeed, has had a relationship with Christ since her baptism. The Catholic understanding of John 3 is pretty much totally related to baptism as the beginning of life in Christ, and officially buying into the Graham interpretation would be strange. - Amy Welborn

Forgiveness [is] all of a piece with God's love. It's not something extra or optional. If God is love, if God is God, then God is forgiveness, and He will forgive all of us everything....For a Christian to forgive is not for him to say, "I forgive you your offenses against me," but, "God forgives you your offences against Him." Christian forgiveness is no more a juridical act, fundamentally, than is Christ's forgiveness. It is an act of evangelism, a proclamation of the Gospel, and to whom are we not to evangelize? - Tom of Disputations

Joy is a sign if a healthy spirituality. How many Catholics do you find that are really joyless, and that joylessness is not confined to either liberals or conservatives, but exists on both ends of the spectrum. (There are a number of blogs that seem absent of joy—or a sense of humor—which illustrate the point adequately.) ... So 'laugh away to your heart’s content. Be as merry as you you please.' [Blessed Jordan of Saxony] - Dom of Bettnet.com

  posted by TS @ 11:25  
June 29, 2005 

 
Peter, Paul & Mary

One of the many things I like about Orthodox icons, like this one or this, is how they typically show the apostles centered around Mary during Pentecost. Party poopers might say this isn't scriptural since we don't know for sure if Mary was there, though it strains credibility to think otherwise given that Acts 1:12 (a few verses before Pentecost) says, "they all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers."

But to depict Mary as the center is fitting because, being our mother, we know her differently and more intimately than we know the apostles. We see her in the picture and say - hey - my mom's there! Would we not center our camera on our mother if she was at some great historical event? 

And I'm sure even on this day St. Peter and St. Paul won't mind because she is their mother too! They can relate.

  posted by TS @ 09:15  
 

 
Ora pro nobis, Flannery

The Flannery O'Connor blog has been updated.

  posted by TS @ 20:32  
June 28, 2005 

 
Blogging Like It's 1984

I was looking for summer clothes in the nether regions of our house when I came across a journal from 1984. 

Man, oh man but it was like a retreived memory! Names that would otherwise be completely unrecoverable were resurrected thanks to the persistence of paper and ink. 

Naturally, I went directly to the internet, do-not-pass-go, to super-sleuth these folks. Mostly I came up empty, although the UCC pastor at my best friend's church (oddly, my close friends have always been Protestants & Jews) is pastoring way out in the rural Pennsylvania near the Appalachian trail. He always did love the natural world. 

The journal has an extremely high "cringe" factor, as in "I can't believe I wrote that". Earnest if trite, some of the frankness in the area of sexuality makes it feel like I am carrying radioactive material around. I really need to burn this. Not that I was that bad but it sounds like it. It's embarrassing on nearly every level imaginable and I'd druther my wife not read the poetry directed at other women. So I could: a) type it into a password-protected Word doc (which would take forever)or b) get it rid of it now or c) save it and hope that I don't die suddenly and thus have time to destroy it before my death. 

But the memories are something else. 

I worked that summer with a guy named Bob who was a man-of-the-world 24 year old who'd graduated from college and taught school for a couple years before working at the local restaurant enroute to the military (I found only that he lives in Birmingham, AL now). Seems I was impressed with him, or perhaps impressed by the fact that he was impressed with me. A snippet:

"Knowing someone like Bob makes me realize how little I've really experienced of life. He has more stories than one would think was possible. Wild stories of travel, of skinny-dipping, of spying on the girls locker room. He seems to me to be an extremely interesting man and complex one - a person not easily categorized as "good" or "bad". He's a churchgoer who loves baseball, collects baseball cards and takes pictures with his expensive camera. He can seem a child, and as innocent. And yet he's done things he can't even mention."

In hindsight, Bob wasn't exactly the picture-postcard role model, to put it mildly. 

~~~

Then too there was the uber-kind Protestant pastor. My best friend's parents were always so smart, always so ahead of the curve. That they were United Church of Christ members back in the 1970s doesn't surprise me - they were non-denominational before non-denominational was cool. Was the UCC the first denomination to end all denominations? But instead of coming home to Rome they went to the newly formed UCC: "the UCC was founded in 1957 as the union of several different Christian traditions: from the beginning of our history, we were a church that affirmed the ideal that Christians did not always have to agree to live together in communion" says the UCC website. I'm not saying I would've done any different if I were in their shoes. It's understandable if someone doesn’t see the truths of Catholicism if they were raised in another tradition. Flannery O'Connor wrote that 
"all voluntary baptisms are a miracle to me and stop my mouth as much as if I had just seen Lazarus walk out of the tomb. I suppose it's because I know that it had to be given me before the age of reason, or I wouldn't have used any reason to find it."
It's also understandable for an uncatechized Catholic to convert, of which there are legion. It's the fully catechized Catholic who converts which is a puzzlement - but for free will and the "diamond hardness of the human heart" as Steven Riddle put it.

  posted by TS @ 18:30  
 

 
Opposite World

We like dandelions when they are young, when their bright yellow flowers dot the meadow. But when they are old they seem unlike themselves, they lose their attractiveness and we say they have "gone to seed". Nearing death they wear crowns of white seeds, crowns that prove that they have not become less than they were but more, a multitude.

Watching an older person lose their memory makes it easy to say that they "are not themselves". But they are not not themselves. That which makes them who they are has not changed. God within them has not changed. And they are closer to Heaven, which is Reality itself, and will be restored to a reality much greater than their best day on earth.

  posted by TS @ 17:26  
 

 
Musing

To be resolved: the fact that there are Scientologists is the best proof of Chesterton's adage that "when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything".

  posted by TS @ 09:28  
 

 
True Words

Ham of Bone said yesterday: "No one on their death bed regrets that they did too much for Christ."

  posted by TS @ 09:05  
 

 
Heaven's of the Energetic

If I read correctly, which I surely did not, Enbrethiliel spent almost seven hours on one blog post, the 100 Greatest Catholic Quotes of All Time.

Two of my favorites, if lesser known, are: 
Discouragement is not from God. - St. Ignatius of Loyola

If you pray, you will have faith. And if you have faith, you will love. And if you have love, you will serve. And if you serve, you will have peace. - Mother Teresa
Update: Also one from Chesterton:
Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded. 

  posted by TS @ 08:54  
 

 
He Just Loves Everybody, Doggone It

I've always been a "I hope everyone gets to Heaven" person, although not to the point of wanting to socialize with everyone there. In my defense I don't expect to be elbowing out Blessed Margaret to get to talk to St. Thomas Aquinas. I know my place, though pride being what it is I don't doubt that I overestimate it. Besides, I assume we'll be so distracted (for once distraction as a positive good!) by the beatific vision that we won't be worried about distinctions. Or, as Fr. Neuhaus once famously wrote, "Hitler in heaven will be forever a little dog to whom we will benignly condescend. But he will be grateful for being there, and for not having received what he deserved," just as "we will all be grateful for being there and for not having received what we deserve."

This was all prompted by news of the recent Graham-Clinton lovefest. My reaction was that it waters down Graham's praise of Pope John Paul II, rendering it as meaningful as an "Up With People" song and as discerning as Bush's soul-seeing ability in light of Vlad Putin's oily behavior. At the very least it showed that the Reverend has terrible taste in friends. But then I realized that by that definition God has the lowest taste in friends of all since the goodness differential between Billy Graham and Bill Clinton is infinitely less than the distance between Billy Graham and God.

So I'm trying to come 'round Billy. Hope this doesn't mean you won't talk to me in Heaven.

  posted by TS @ 08:22  
 

 
Remembering "Moonlight" Graham
No wonder it took quite awhile for his story to get around -- and for author W.P. Kinsella to make Graham a part of the poetry and romance that celebrate the lore and lure of baseball.

More than a decade after Graham died in 1965, the prize-winning author was leafing through the Baseball Encyclopedia that his father-in-law had given him a few days earlier. Among the listings for every player and their lifetime statistics, Kinsella came across something that stopped him.

"I found this entry for Moonlight Graham. How could anyone come up with that nickname? He played one game but did not get to bat. I was intrigued, and I made a note that I intended to write something about him,'' he said.

A few years later, he did. His 1982 novel Shoeless Joe was adapted into the film Field of Dreams in 1989, and Moonlight was reborn.

  posted by TS @ 09:50  
June 27, 2005 

 
Of Books

Interview in the Columbus Dispatch with Steve Leveen, author of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, who discovered reading in middle age (beats most responses to the midlife crisis):
Q:  Why own books insted of borrowing them?
A:  Borrowed books are gold; owning books is magic. Having your own library of 'candidates' is like having your own bookstore...They are like friends waiting for you to come play, friendly old uncles ready to tell you an amazing story, lovers ready for a weekend away. Don't deny yourself those pleasures.

Q:  Why should people write in their books?
A:  I do a whole section on this in the book, but here's one convincing reason: In future years, your loved ones will delight to know what you thought of a passage. Write to your grandchildren.

  posted by TS @ 09:42  
 

 
Bike Ride

Took a long bike ride out to the country, the first one of the summer. I’m amused by my reaction to seeing a corn field again, amused that after six months it can almost fill a need, as if it's on Maslow’s hierarchy. So I crossed that one off. One can certainly live without seeing green, living things and we do all winter, but we’re richer during the summer. As John Denver once sang, “I know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly.”

I see a groundhog disappear on invisible legs into the brush line and later three bunny “hoppits”, as my wife calls them, their noses and ears twitching nervously. A perfect golden-hue’d field lies to my right, contrasted pleasingly by the emerald of young soy. The farmhouse and out buildings are fantastically kept up, the rural equivalent of not having a “hair out of place”. I long to rest in that order, in the short-clipped grass resting against the straight edge of the green crops. After watching the movie “Field of Dreams” back in the late ‘90s I wanted to plant a corn field in my backyard. Of course the work involved would be daunting (we have about 3/4ths of an acre) and my wife would never stand for it. But it’s always been a dream to have my own corn field and to disappear among the tall stalks. 

Apropos of nothing an old song comes to mind 
Living on Tulsa Time.
Living on Tulsa Time.
Gonna set my watch back to it
'Cause you know that I've been through it.
Living on Tulsa Time.
I always wanted to go to Tulsa. I love the name; it rolls off the tongue. Going to a town because you like the name is probably not the best reason to go but I figured that a city no one purposely goes to might be worth going to. Oklahoma isn’t exactly a hot destination but just as on the political curve the extreme right-wing is actually left-wing, I imagined Tulsa to be so uncharismatic as to make it charismatic. 

I think of my favorite aunt. And I think that maybe I understand something she had in her cellar better. When she was young she contracted a disease that resulted in not having body hair for the rest of her life. She wore a wig and painted on eyebrows and in my youth and sweet obliviousness to appearances, I had not a clue. But I remember that she had a picture in her basement of a woman with long, beautiful hair and admiring herself in a mirror. If you looked at the picture from farther away it appeared to be a skull, and at the bottom there was a caption warning agaist vanity. It occurred to me for the first time that she must've keenly felt her lack of hair and so that picture must've been somewhat consolatory, in knowing that all things pass.

  posted by TS @ 09:09  
 

 
In Our DNA

There’s nothing that seems quite as silly as believing cultural characteristics lurk in our DNA. Such as thinking that we of Irish heritage like the sound of the Irish language because our ancestors spoke it generations ago. Or that the smell of burning peat dug from Irish bogs awakens some distant ancestral memory. Yet writers like Pete McCarthy and Tom Hayden and others written of it and I think its kind of cool.

I think that desire is interesting, this odd hope that our ancestors left not just their physical characteristics but in some vague sense part of their soul. It’s is a very Catholic sensibility, since we have been given the great gift of Jesus, Body and Soul, in the Eucharist. The boundaries of time and substance are not fixed, the impossible made possible.

  posted by TS @ 08:10  
 

 
Worst List

Another book list, this one looks at the ten worst Christian books of the modern era.

No. 10 is: "Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking", about which the blogger writes, "A little happy narcissistic Pelagianism never hurt anyone, right?"

I came to a similar conclusion about Peale last year although I still find it an interesting topic. One of Peale's prescriptions was to repeat the phrase "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me" ten times every morning, which is ironic given that that verse from St. Paul would seem to be about as anti-Pelagian as it gets since it is Christ giving us the strength. Since grace builds on nature rather than obliterating it, it would be lame to take no responsibility for one's thoughts and simply assume that it's God's job to have us think positively. I'm thinking aloud here, but the danger seems to come in attempting to use God as a means to our end, i.e. to our improved mental health, instead of allowing Him to use us for His end.

  posted by TS @ 12:45  
June 26, 2005 

 
Crack Cocaine to a Bibliophile

I love lists like this.

This book, while casting absolutely no aspersions on its content, has the quintessential American title doesn't it? Reminds me of the phrase "get rich quick".

  posted by TS @ 12:43  
 

 
Odds 'n Ends

From bookshop's advertisement flyer (run by a former British R.A.F. woman pilot):
As 98% of you now buy all your books on Internet, how sad you are missing the major Aura of buying a book. The ombience created by each O.P. specialist. Out West were the weirdest. Stuffed lion, carpets & cushions invited laying on! I used to love to guess the background of these interesting owners! Esentrics we Brits called them. Bred by the 1,000's because of the *Empire builders journeys* took them to the mystical East of the torid Tropics, then *home* to chilly G.B. to spend their wayning years sharing adventures & love of books that had kept them sane. So dear book lovers, use us for the last few years & visit by appointment remembering the Internet & phone pay the OVERHEAD!

(Translation hints: G.B. = Great Britain and O.P. = out of print)
___

It's not good that men should live alone. For man living alone = television golf. Overheard a late 20-something male on the elevator say this week:
My roommate moved out so I'm on my own for the first time. It was great, drank six, seven beers while watching golf all day.

  posted by TS @ 12:30  
 

 
...Because I Just Love Writing Fiction
Rob Meyers was twelve years old when he became acquainted with the television show “Wonder Woman”. He was surprised the bad guys weren't distracted by her outfit and why it seemed she didn't get more mileage out of that. Didn’t Batman use his good looks to trap Cat Woman at least once? Why shouldn’t Wonder Woman do the same? He congratulated himself for his fairness and wondered if that made him as a feminist. 

He felt close to the actress Linda Carter because she looked like the 16-year old who babysat him when he was ten and whom he had a secret crush on. All crushes at that age were secret so that was redundant, but her proximity was an additional aphrodesiac since she lived right next door. She wore the hotpants that were the fashion in the ‘70s and used to loudly play a song on her stereo with the lyric, "I love to ride my bicycle, I love to ride my bike”. He could very much relate to that song since he loved riding his bicycle too. He felt they had much in common. 

One night, as he was taping over the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” in favor of the theme to “Buck Rogers of the 25th Century”, he asked her if they could order a pizza but she said no because it caused “zits”. He didn’t have any zits but never really noticed if she had any either. That would involve too close a study, and he felt worshipped objects should not be subjected to such rude scrutiny.

The next day, while using a tape measure to determine how far he could long jump, the babysitter came home from her glamorous high school life. He watched dumbfounded as a teenage boy dropped her off from school. He wondered if he was her boyfriend. He didn’t like it. He liked it better when she rode the bus like everybody else. 

He went to the backyard to think it over, and to see if the Phillies could beat the Dodgers on his Pitchback. “Pitchback” was a large net mounted on a pole with a square in the middle indicating the strike zone. He took his cap and after making a quick writing motion in the air (he was right-handed) he laid the cap against the left side of his chest and sang the Star Spangled Banner. 

“Play ball!” he said, as Davey Lopes stepped to the plate...

  posted by TS @ 17:52  
June 25, 2005 

 
Something New & Old in the "New Covenant"

Cardinal Ratzinger's Many Religions - One Covenant is a deep and satisfying read, particularly in the way he makes connections between the Old & New Testaments: 


Paul is well aware that, prior to the Christian history of salvation, the word "covenant" had to be understood and spoken of in the plural; out of these various covenants he selects two particularly, sets them up in mutual opposition, and refers each one to the covenant in Christ: these are the covenant with Abraham and the covenant with Moses. He sees the covenant made with Abraham as the real, fundamental, and abiding covenant; according to Paul, the covenant made with Moses was interposed 430 years after the Abrahamic covenant; it could not abrogate the covenant with Abraham but constituted only an intermediary stage in God's providential plan...

God's pedagogy with mankind operates in such a way that its individual props are jettisoned when the goal of the educational process is reached. Particular paths are abandoned, but the meaning remains. The convenant with Moses is incorporated into the covenant with Abraham, and the Law becomes the mediator of promise. Thus Paul distinguishes very sharply between two kinds of covenant that we find in the Old Testament itself: the covenant that consists of legal prescriptions and the covenant that is essentially a promise, the gift of friendship, bestowed without conditions.
      'Law is Grace' is not a Contradiction

For the Law is not only a burden imposed on believers - as we are inclined to think, due to the one-sided emphasis of the Pauline antitheses. As seen by Old Testament believers, the Law itself is the concrete form of grace. For to know God's will is grace. And to know God's will is to know oneself, to understand the world, to know what our destination is. It means that we are liberated from the darkness of our endless questioning, that the light as come, that light without which we can neither see nor move. "You have not shown your will to any other nation": for Israel, at least for its best representatives, the Law is the visibility of the truth...

  posted by TS @ 10:59  
June 24, 2005 

 
Pope John Paul II Moment of Silence

I didn't realize the Reds did that on Opening Day. Very cool.




The Reds and Mets line up after introductions and pause for a moment of silence in honor of the passing of Pope John Paul II before the start of their opening day game at Great American Ballpark. (Greg Lynch/Cox News Service) 

  posted by TS @ 08:52  
 

 
Bob Dylan on Sixty Minutes

Dylan's book Chronicles is one I'd like to read but surely never will. Watched a recent interview with Ed Bradley. He's more interesting than the usual celebrity:
[Do you] ever look back at the music [you've] written with surprise? 

"I used to. I don't do that anymore. I don't know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written," says Dylan, who quotes from his 1964 classic, "It's Alright, Ma." 

"Try to sit down and write something like that. There's a magic to that, and it's not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It's a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time." 

Does he think he can do it again today? No, says Dylan. "You can't do something forever," he says. "I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can't do that." 

  posted by TS @ 08:34  
 

 
Say It Ain't So, Joe

It's chilling to learn there are conservatives who would not rule out voting for Sen. Hillary "The Ends Justifies the Means if it Means I'm in Office" Clinton. But then since some fellow conservatives are okay with torture as a means to a good end, so perhaps it's not as far-fetched as I'd thought.

  posted by TS @ 08:15  
 

 
The Great Bingo Riot of 2005

Okay so I slightly exaggerate. But at the end of one of yesterday's bingo games we had five winners and the caller thought there were four so we ended up overpaying all five. After the miscue was discovered four of them graciously gave back the $50 overpayment but one said "go fish", "sorry about your luck", or "bank error in my favor". Pick your phrase. 

So our intrepid leader Joe announced that the last bingo pot would be shy $50 and an uproar ensued. "BULLSH-T!" many yelled. "Why should we suffer for your mistake" was the verdict of an increasingly ugly crowd.

I told Joe that that was an unpopular message to deliver (just doing my impression of "Master of the Obvious") and he tersely said "I don't care." Sensitive subject.

So the next game was tense, the air pickled with pangs of purple'd rage (or at least purple'd prose). Something had to give. So Joe made another announcement requesting that the person who was overpaid give back the money. And eventually, seemingly hours later, he or she did. Order was restored.

"A happy ending," I said to a co-worker.

"No it's not!" snapped someone who overheard me. 

Just another night in the ol' bingo parlor.

Earlier that evening I'd arrived a tad late and all the floorworkers were already doing their thing. So Joe had me training at the window where the players buy their bingo sheets. I was stationed with a guy I'll call Sam who wore a small hoop earring but was straight as the 4th of July. North of sixty years old and quick as a whip, he had white silver hair and in manner & appearance seemed a cross between Little Jimmy Dickens and Ross Perot. To say he was flirtatious is like saying Shaq can play basketball. I mean this guy holds a black belt in Flirt; he's a jujitsu instructor in female flattery. He told every woman how lovely they looked and would often hold their hands or caress their wrists and lower arms. I haven't felt as much a third wheel since high school when my best friend was always canoodling his girlfriend. "There's a shack out back we can go to..." Sam tells a particular favorite. 

He took a short break to get coffee. Said he was tired. If he was tired than I've never not been tired.

  posted by TS @ 07:53  
 

 
If...

...you could say a quick prayer for my stepson I'd appreciate it. He's 24, been married a year, and is thinking of quitting his 9-to-5 office job in order to join the Navy.

  posted by TS @ 09:42  
June 23, 2005 

 
Pep Talk

Well it's late in the week and it's summer and you know what that means. It means the likelihood that I'll have something meaningful to say approaches critical non-mass. (It's heartening to see I'm not the only one.) The temptation is to type "Yes, we have no blog posts! We have no blog posts today!" to tune of "Yes, We Have No Bananas".

But being the blogging professional I am - hey another for my oxymoron collection! - I thought I'd give a spiel on the importance of nutrition and exercise.

Since grace builds on nature, we can hardly expect God to overcome the abuses we inflict on our bodies. He gives us the tools and we use them. And so a couple months ago I began regularly mixing nutritional saccharomyces cerevisiae in milk and having that for breakfast. And I now take a daily multivitamin, something I've ignored for over a decade. And I do feel better. It certainly beats the morning donut.

Exercise is also something not to be taken for granted. Dr. Paul Dudley White said that a "vigorous five mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world." 

The point is not to raise fitness and nutrition to the be all and end all, but simply to recognize that our physical and mental health is somewhat dependent on the conduit of our own behaviors or misbehaviors. Or, as the saying in our house goes, "self-inflicted ponc is the worst kind."

  posted by TS @ 09:14  
 

 
Crystal's right. All I can say is wow.

  posted by TS @ 08:18  
 

 
Flashback

The brine in our cells danced
to the ocean’s motion 
till sea memories
implanted and blanch’d 
sand white as Purity 
washed to our feet
as night fell on sunburnt
sheets wet with aloe.

  posted by TS @ 22:46  
June 22, 2005 

 
Aquinas & Augustine

Over the past year or so I've become interested in St. Thomas Aquinas & St. Augustine, the two spiritual giants of Catholic theology. And it's fascinating to me why someone becomes a Thomist and someone else an Augustinian. Is it merely a personality difference? Why a Fr. Groeschel adores St. Augustine and a Jacques Maritain finds Thomas to be his guru? Perhaps part of why Aquinas is so appealing is because so often in our lives (and in Christian history) there have been delusions (aka heresies) and his logical systemizing is like a salve on those wounds. And, as Saul Bellow once wrote, 
I was always drawn to people who were orderly in a large sense and had mapped out the world and made it coherent. We had a buddy back in the States who liked to tell us, 'Order is charismatic.'
And no where does one find more order than in St. Thomas. Still, there is something very appealing about Augustine because he is so personal. This tends to be a very personal blog so it would seem I lean towards Augustine despite my admiration for Aquinas. I recently read something from a commenter on Dispuations that I hadn't seen before. The commenter quoted John Allen: 
Of Aquinas, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger once wrote, "His crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made."

  posted by TS @ 11:08  
 

 
The Summer of Our Discontent

Well the Reds fired their manager today. Probaby a month overdue actually. To tune of Sweet Molly Malone:
In Cincy's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, 

that's where I first met the oldest pro team. 

They stole many bases and hit many johnsons

And in '75 beat the Sox in Boston 

and we cried 'Go Reds, Go Reds!

Alive alive-o'! (Chorus)
But alas, now they are 'dead, dead-o'! But don't cry for me Argentina, cry for area kids who are ten, eleven and twelve. That's when it means everything. And that's when the Big Red Machine years ran for me, right down the boulevard of my youth, winning pennants when I was 7, 9, 12 and 13. I experienced a second youth in 1990 they swept the Oakland A's.

  posted by TS @ 07:32  
 

 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus is a burden without a reliever. - Fulton J. Sheen of Heaven

My parents were very strict about music with us when we were growing up. We weren't alowed to listen to anything my parents thought would disorder our souls... which I guess meant, anything that would add more troubles to our day then the day itself had decreed sufficient...I also remember being flummoxed repeatedly by my high school friends increasingly darker attitudes and perspectives. The music was always with them - on the bus, at their parties, on their alarms, in all their free-time, and they kept getting more glassy-eyed and rebellious as they got more and more into Pink Floyd, Metallica, Black Sabbath, etc...We had lots of music in the house, but it was happy music... But the happy music we had in our lives warded off any resentment we might have otherwise nurtured. Music is very important. The songs in your heart can give you either inner hope and joy, or inner meaninglessness and cynicism. I always marvel how parents can just shrug off what their kids are listening to. - Quote from "Church of the Masses" via Amy Welborn

When we hear someone speak of what is true or good, we brace ourselves for the implied imperative to change our lives. We don't like that. But beauty, well, we already seek beauty....beauty connotes no fear of punishment; we go straight to enjoyment of the pleasure we derive from it. That would be a strictly limited submission to authority, limited by the duration and quantity of pleasure we experience, until and unless we advance to the third stair, of filial love for the Beauty Who created us. - Tom of Disputations

Perhaps it's like putting up a statue of Tonto, the Loan Ranger's Indian sidekick at Wounded Knee -- just how would that go over? - Falcon of "Lofted Nest", on news that a statue of the Bewitched sitcom is going up in Salem, Mass

May I please,please,please count the four Haynes auto repair manuals I own for each of the cars? They're not exactly leisure reading but I do read them, and in precisely the way they were designed to be read. I caught a friend reading The DaVinci Code the other day (he's a mechanic, incidentally) and I'm sure he would be allowed to count it among the books he owns. But a Haynes auto repair manual is a far more worthy work for a number of reasons: first, it actually imparts accurate and useful knowledge; second, it does not consciously mislead you (tell lies); third, it does not presume to know what it cannot know but deals only with the facts at hand; fourth, it has no designs on destroying that which you hold most dear (your religion) but would in fact help you preserve that which you hold most dear (your car); fifth, the prose is better; sixth, there will be no sequel. - Bill of Apologia, on "How Many Books Do You Own" meme

Over the past 24 hours, my total ‘hits per day’ count has inexplicably risen by one. - Thomas of ER, in a post tited "For That Special Someone.."

Our parents weren't 'the greatest generation' -- we're the worst. That 'greatest generation' stuff is sheer Yuppie self-serving: we call our parents 'great' to imply that we're normal, when in fact they were normal and we're a bunch of self-absorbed cowardly gits." - Cacciaguida. (Git?)

[The book of] Job is a comedy – the status quo is not restored, but he’s given a hundred-fold of what he started with. Think of the great story of the Bible as a whole, how it starts in a Garden, but finishes in a grand City with a Garden in the middle, the Tree of Life prominently given for all to enjoy. - Thomas of ER

The humidity is so high that breathing is considered aerobic exercise.- m'Lynn of "Scattershot Direct" on summer Texas weather

  posted by TS @ 07:31  
 

 
~ June 22 ~



Today the Church celebrates my patron saint's birthday into Heaven!

I feel a deep affinity for St. Thomas More. He didn't volunteer to become a martyr, doing everything he could think of to avoid it but not flinching when it was required. He was also a man with a strong libido. And I deeply appreciate that I get to share his name and my earthly birthday with his heavenly one.

He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced
-- Samuel Johnson (quote via Sancta Sanctis)

St. Thomas, pray for us!

  posted by TS @ 07:30  
 

 
Depends on the Definition of Sanity

Was reading a biography of convert/priest Isaac Hecker over the weekend and it says that when he was still and praying he longed for activity and mission, but when he was working he longed to be still and prayerful. Alas, the human condition in a nutshell.

There was also a blurb about how he had a "breakdown", then "common among 19th century idealists". Lots of madness in the Romantic era. I guess in some ways we're more sane but also more at the risk of living in Brave New World-ish comas.

  posted by TS @ 22:50  
June 21, 2005 

 
Write, Son. Write like the Wind!

There was a Writer's Club meeting during lunch today but I blew it off. Sponsored by work, no less. I'm not much of a joiner and writing is such a solitary activity anyway that all I could picture was a bunch of introverts sitting around the table engaging in pretentious conversation. 

But fortunately one of my work colleagues attended. He reports, you decide if it was worth it:
I had thrown on a mud colored corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows that I had bought off a bum for a fiver. I mussed my hair a little, pasted on my best cynical sneer, and slouched sullenly into the room. After quickly scanning for a good looking young thing to set next to I eased into a seat between an earnest looking Arab man and a thin oriental girl...Most of the workshop revolved around generating good ideas. Something I haven't done since I wrote that pioneer day parade piece for the Mt. Vernon Times last summer. I came out of there with a couple of handouts and free copy of Writers Digest. Not a bad haul considering my low expectations. 
Not to be outdone, another frustrated writer/co-worker weighs in, not letting not having gone weigh him down:
I forgot all about the writers club. I pictured a room of heavyset Jean Teasdales wearing muumuus and clutching dog-eared manuscripts, waxing rhapsodic about how the last rejection letter was personally addressed (unlike all those ones addressed to Dear Submitter), who entertain fantasies of meeting Fabio when he poses for the cover of their blockbuster bodice-ripper that turns the genre upside down; mingling with mouth-breathing slumpshouldered pastyfaced thirtysomethings with the bad posture, curved back and narrow shoulders of lifelong D&D junkies who have expanded on the fictional "I never thought I would be writing to Penthouse Forum, but the most unbelievable thing just..." letter they submitted in college; interspersed with earnest young emo males sporting Cleopatrick eye makeup, angular bangs with carefully and conscientiously tousled back and sides, whose two-dimensional characters serve as editorial backdrops demonstrating that they have not outgrown the obligatory college-age phase of Ayn Rand worship. I pictured all that, and couldn't decide which one I wanted to go as. I'll stick with launching sarcastic broadsides from my pathetic cubicle.
Now that boy can write.

  posted by TS @ 16:34  
 

 
Will Blog For Beer or Links

Okay Erik. Have I not done sufficient penance for quoting the Indigo Girls yet?

  posted by TS @ 16:08  
 

 
Sign of the Apocalypse, #37,102

As they say, you can't make that stuff up.

  posted by TS @ 15:37  
 

 
New Perspectives on Paul

Interesting link from Amy about how many scholars have been reconsidering Paul. Bill Cork comments:
Paul needs to be understood in context. He only discusses justification in two letters, Romans and Galatians, both of which have the context of how can Jews and Gentiles both be members of the new covenant in Jesus Christ. Paul's response is that we are members of this covenant (justified) not through the Law (the Torah, the Mosaic Covenant) but through Faith. 

Paul is thus not interested in the question of Luther, how can I, wracked with guilt and a troubled conscience, find peace with God.

I'd say this insight is taken for granted today by most Biblical scholars, Catholic and Protestant; and as such, it provides an opportunity for ecumenical advance because it gets us out of the passions and blinders of 16th century polemics to ask what Paul meant to his first hearers.
It seems like the whole "Salvation Formula" (to borrow from the Zipster) is something that really took a life of its own around the time of the Reformation. Our mutual contagiousness is so striking when you see how most everyone of that era and beyond was afflicted to a greater or lesser degree; saints like St. Alphonsus de Ligouri and St. Philip Neri were at points in time afflicted with terrible scrupolosity and dark doubts about their salvation. My impression is that Eastern Christianity was somewhat protected from this disease given their distance and almost hermetically sealed environment. Perhaps I'm wrong, but they seem to have mostly avoided the whole pox of seeing our relationship with God as contractual rather than familial. Of course when individualism became big in Western society it's not surprising that salvation came to be seen solely in individualistic terms.

  posted by TS @ 09:44  
 

 
Isak Dinesen quote II

She writes of experiencing an earthquake for the first time, and after her intial fear and terror by the third aftershock she writes of the joy of hope:
The feeling of colossal pleasure lies chiefly in the consciousness that something which you have reckoned to be immovable, has got it in it to move on its own. That is probably one of the strongest sensations of joy and hope in the world. The dull globe, the dead mass, the Earth itself, rose and stretched under me. It sent me out a message, the slightest touch, but of unbounded significance. It laughed so that the Native huts fell down and cried: Eppur si muove.

  posted by TS @ 09:01  
 

 
He Knew Too Little But Trusted Much

One of the reasons I love the Bill Murray movie (I’ll resist saying ‘vehicle’) The Man Who Knew Too Little is that everything Murray's character does is inadvertent. He is completely clueless and unaware of the danger he is in but somehow he manages to escape disaster, unlike his prideful know-it-all brother. 

How like our story! We are clueless of most of the dangers we face. If we had any idea of our true fragility we wouldn’t get up in the morning (which reminds me of what Peter Kreeft wrote in his book about angels: if we had any concept of the power of prayer and how its effects resonate through the centuries we’d be paralyzed to the point of never rising from our knees). 

Yet we somehow barely escape disasters because God protects even the ignorant. Bill Murray's character is a trusting child (in the good sense, i.e. child-like) and that is what Our Lord said we must be in order to see Heaven.

  posted by TS @ 08:36  
 

 
Returning to Africa

I've been enjoying Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa for the past five years or so, averaging maybe fifty pages per annum. It's one of those books that lends itself to episodic visits since it is chockful of anecdotes and small stories. Lately the book concerns itself with the differences between the native Africans and Europeans. Written in 1937, she sees moderns growing continually less civilized and the natives more so, and predicts we'll eventually trade places. 
The people who expect the Natives to jump joyfully from the stone age to the age of motor cars, forget the toil and labour which our own fathers have had, to bring us all through history to where we are...We of the present day, who love our machines, cannot quite imagine how people in the old days could live without them. But we could not make the Athanasian Creed, or the technique of the Mass, or of a five-act tragedy, and perhaps not even a sonnet. And if we had not found them there ready for our use, we should have had to do without them. Still we must imagine, since they have been made at all, that there was a time when the hearts of humanity cried out for these things, and when a deeply felt want was relieved when they were made.
Dinesen goes on to suggest that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was greeted with the same delight by natives that moderns greet technological innovations. She chided the skeptical Europeans who blamed ulterior motives.
Father Bernard came over on his motor bicycle one day, his bearded face all beaming with bliss and triumph...[for] nine young Kikuyu, from the Church of Scotland Mission, had come and asked to be received in the Roman Catholic Church, because they had, upon meditation and discussions, come to hold with the doctrine of the Transubstantiation, of that Church.
On where Europe and the natives will be a few generations hence:
Where shall they find us then? Shall we in the meantime have caught them by the tail and be hanging on to it, in our pursuit of some shade, some darkness, practising upon a tomtom? Will they be able to have our motor cars at cost price then, as they can now have the doctrine of the Transubstantiation?
Prescient, she.

  posted by TS @ 12:43  
June 20, 2005 

 
Piratical Nonsense

"Walk the plank ye bla'guard!" said the swarthy pirate, swarthy in the way most pirates at the Island of the Chronologically Incorrect are.

"Hold your hooks!" said a lawyer for the accused. (The accused had killed twenty-three men and raped six women but was on trial for allegedly saying to the captain, 'a bit greedy ain't ye?'.) "The plank must be at least thirty inches long in order to insure that the accused won't hit the ship's hull on the way down."

"Ayyyye!" said the pirate-in-charge. "Lawyers will be the death o' me!"

Spare wooden treasure chests were quickly dismantled and within the hour the plank was lengthened to the requisite length. Several pirates then tapped their glassware with their forks in order to re-quiet the crowd. 

"Pirates & gabberdeans, ne'erdowells and misunderstood misanthropes, I am here to pronounce the words that will result in the death of the man who insulted our esteemed captain, Bob Keeshan. So again I say, ye bla'guard, WALK THE PLANK!!"

"No --wait!" said the lawyer. "Regulations for plank walking require a plank surface that is completely free of nails, splinters and other imperfections pursuant to the safe passage of the party of the first part."

The pirates gathered around the plank and saw, to their dismay, many nails and splinters and imperfections that would prevent the defendant from traveling the length of the plank with anything approaching peace of mind. 

"OWWWYYYYYYIIII!" screamed the pirate-in-charge in a vowell-crushing spectacle that would've broken the spirit of Professor Higgins. "Aww heck, let's just go find a ship to sack! Got a problem with that mister attorney?"

"No, as you well know ship-plundering and the taking of innocent lives are protected under the law."

  posted by TS @ 09:15  
 

 
Full moon crosses the night sky
a pale orb full of jobs
with tides to affect and places to be
ever toting its borrowed light.

  posted by TS @ 07:50  
 

 
Dog & Pony Shows

Whenever we come home we always find our dog waiting for us and always with at least one of his toys in his mouth. We judge his enthusiasm for our return by how many stuffed animals he has. We occasionally get "two shows" and on exceptionally rare occasions "three shows". We've also taught our 118-lb animal to do a few basic tricks such as shaking hands and giving us a high-five. 

There's nothing more exciting than pleasing God and that excitement is most palpable when it happens in matters where heretofore He hasn’t seen much obedience. But the trick is to never tire of showing God the same "toy", or showing him the same ol’ "trick". Our dog never tires of shaking hands. And that we’ve learned to obey in one matter doesn’t mean that obedience there can then be discarded after doing it once or thrice or a million times.

  posted by TS @ 07:22  
 

 
Get 'er Done

Government funded studies show that blogs with catch phrases receive fifty percent more hits. Studies also show that when every living American has said "Get 'er done" twice, then that phrase will fade from the nation's parlance.

So I'm just doin' my part to get 'er done!

  posted by TS @ 23:07  
June 19, 2005 

 
Sowell's Latest

Been reading Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks with the proverbial mixed emotions. My sepia-tinged sainted Irish forbears, or at least the Scot-Irish (which is presumably close enough for guvmint work), don't come off too good. Lazy, ill-educated, mean-spirited, and prideful. Not exactly paragons of virtue. His thesis is that the reason blacks have had trouble assimilating is because they were influenced by southern whites who were influenced in turn by their Ulster & Scottish forbears. Which is to say, very sensitive to insult, very concerned about their reputation and thinking little of education. 

The persistence of culture is something often underrated; David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" was a real eye-opener for me. New England was founded by East Anglians while the South was founded by the Scots, the Welsh, the Scot-Irish, and they were as different as night is to day, perhaps because the former didn’t have to fight the British for eight centuries, which might make you much more of a fighting, take-no-crap fatalistic culture. Sowell, who is black, points out the similarities between Southerns of the 19th century for whom honor meant everything and urban blacks who now will also kill over an insult. So I guess Clinton was closer to being the first black president than we thought.

  posted by TS @ 17:20  
 

 
"Same As It Ever Was"
    - from "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads 

I was a groomsman at my brother-in-law's wedding yesterday and it was quite an event (as one could expect from a groom with such a theatrical bent). The ceremony was emotionally uplifting, as weddings usually are, and they'd done some spade work for the reception. The wedding party was introduced not just with names but with mild "roasts", toddling out individually to a hand-picked song. The song they chose for me was the Beatles "Paperback Writer". (Ironically, later I would meet a real writer, whose girlfriend was a bridesmaid.)

But the intended reason for this entry is what happened before the wedding. It was 3:55, just thirty-five minutes before the wedding began, and I was wandering around this Lutheran church when I came across the empty pastor's office. And there were books inside. Lots of them. And it drew me like a flame and so I was in there all of twenty seconds before the pastor came in, looking surprised to see me.

I immediately explained that I love books, especially theology books, hoping that was adequate justification to a fellow bibliophile for such a brazen trespass. And I explained how I'd overheard him talking to my daughter-in-law at the rehearsal dinner about a book he strongly recommended. 

He was the type who really likes to talk, so we talked about his current read that explains why Pilate was so quick to execute an innocent man despite the reputation Roman law had for being thorough and fair. And then we talked about why the Jewish high priests and scribes didn't see Jesus as the Messiah. And then out o' the blue - an apparent nonsequitor to my ear - I hear something about Jesus having brothers. I didn't respond (he didn't know I was Catholic) but then he mentioned it a second time and I said, "well, the word could also mean cousins". 

I think y'all can predict the rest. 

It was all very friendly, which was cool. It helped that I felt like I had the weak side of the argument and so wasn't the least bit annoyed at him. It's when I feel I have the strong side of an argument that I get annoyed. Still have to work on that. (Fortunately he wasn't too much annoyed at me.) 

I brought up Jesus giving Mary to John and not his brothers and he says that Jesus couldn't trust his brothers since they thought He was insane. I said that might be true but did that mean they wouldn't care for their mother? And he said I was extrapolating my own beliefs on the text and it was all very friendly. He said why on earth would Mary & Joseph not had other children and I said that vows between married people not to have sex were not unheard of at that time, when there was great expectation of a messiah. Plus John the Baptist was an Essene and they were into virginity. 

Basically it's not an argument much worth having, which he tacitly admitted when he said that he thinks Roman Catholics and the Orthodox are surely wrong for believing in the perpetual virginity of Mary but that if he gets to Heaven and finds out he's wrong he won't mind being wrong one bit and that he expects I wouldn't either. 

There's something humorous about having an argument that might've happened at least three hundred years ago. (I would say 500 years ago but I think Martin Luther was pretty orthodox concerning Marian beliefs.) It had a theatre-of-the-absurd aspect to it as if this pastor and I were acting in parts of a play that have been continually re-acted with almost the same words for hundreds of years. Same as it ever was. The thing I regret is not having read Tom of Disputations's recent post& once gigantic thread on the topic...

  posted by TS @ 17:09  
June 18, 2005 

 
Non-Sequitor Communication

Chris Matthews was positively giddy on IMUS tdoay. "See I told you", he said, "the Schiavo autopsy proved it was all a huge publicity stunt on the part of Republicans".

Say what Willis? 

Who in the world didn't think Terri was brain-damaged? I thought the issue hinged on whether a life is worthless if it's not productive, and whether we have the authority to take another's life. Not whether it was reversible. From Not Dead Yet after the autopsy: 
The autopsy also documented significant brain atrophy, and the medical panel called the damage "irreversible." 

This is not the same as saying she had no cognitive ability. 

"It's always seemed to us that PVS isn't really a diagnosis; it's a value judgment masquerading as a diagnosis," said Stephen Drake, research analyst for Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group that filed three amicus briefs in the case. "When it comes to the hard science, no qualified pathologist went on the record saying she couldn't think or couldn't experience her own death through dehydration."... 

"The core issues remain the same. Protection of the life and dignity of people under guardianship, and a high standard of proof in removing food and water from a person who can not express their own wishes."

  posted by TS @ 09:25  
June 17, 2005 

 
Protests Form Outside Steven Riddle's Blog

    

  posted by TS @ 08:07  
 

 
Let Us Now Praise Famous Ethnic Groups

At the risk of sounding like Miss Mortimer...

Went to the rehearsal dinner for my brother-in-law's impending wedding. He's marrying into an old-fashioned Irish Catlick family from Illinois, all U of I grads and according to my brother in law, 'all witty and charming --if you think our family is funny you should hear them around the dinner table' he said. Telling stories and being charming are two Irish characteristics that have evaded me, though I suppose I can drink like an Irishman. The family has those large Tip O'Neillian noses and I feel a bit of nose envy since my nose is much more pedestrian. The patriarch told a joke at the dinner and we laughed uproariously, though I wondered if we did more for the excellent quality of the joke-telling than the quality of the joke. 

The Lutheran minister who will be officiating was earnest and animated, somehow managing to be both intense and laid back. Eventually I realize who he reminds me of-- the wonderful German family I grew up next to in Cincy. I suspect he comes by his Lutheranism honestly. So while enganging in stereotypes, I may as well extend it to religious denominations. I think of Luther & Lutherans with great sympathy; while Calvin was a healthy individual hobnobbing atop his anti-clerical hobbyhorse and King Henry was interested in gaining progeny, Luther was looking for relief from scrupulosity. He wielded a wrecking ball too but seems less culpable, as if backed into a corner until forced to say "here I stand, I can do no other." If he denied free will, he wasn't too far from Augustine, who had to do so to combat the Pelegian heresy.

  posted by TS @ 07:13  
 

 
Free Steven Riddle!

I was tempted to put this blog on hiatus until Mr. Riddle*, who has been crushed by work, begins blogging again. But then I concluded that if I did so the terrorists will have won. Or something like that. 

Most of 2001 was a nightmare, work-wise, for me. That was when we tried to do the impossible and largely succeeded due to the preternatural drive, intelligence and skinflintedness of Ham o' Bone. (We are exempts but were paid for overtime for that seemingly crucial project. While this proposition was not attractive to either myself or the other team member (valuing time more than money), it drew Ham like odd people are drawn to Michael Jackson.) I recall that project with horror, a time when even my dreams were filled with work thoughts and approaching deadlines. So Steven has my sympathy and prayers.

* * * 

During the work week my thoughts typically go unfertilized by deep reading or Guinness and so they begin to fray and shallow. You say: "well, why blog if you don't have anything to say?" and I say "see my blog title". :-) So in lieu of profundity I'll pass along a link a friend passed along which told me I have a "birth tree":
Your birth tree is

Fig Tree, the Sensibility
Very strong, a bit self-willed, independent, does not allow contradiction or arguments, loves life, its family, children and animals, a bit of a butterfly, good sense of humour, likes idleness and laziness, of practical talent and intelligence.
Looking at this a bit more closely....

"Very strong, a bit self-willed, independent..."
Aren't all Americans a bit self-willed and independent? It's part of our cultural legacy. (See Emerson.)

"Does not allow contradiction or arguments"
I would argue with this. Am I not contradicting this birth tree nonsense?

"Loves life, its family, children and animals"
Well only Andy Rooney & Bill Mahrer don't love family, children and animals. So there's a real limb.

"A bit of a butterfly, good sense of humor"
I'm half German, and Germans aren't known for their "butterflyness" or their sense of humor, so if true I credit my Oirish side. Anyway everybody thinks they have a good sense of humor.

"Likes idleness and laziness"
Surely this applies to at least 90% of people who would actually take the time to read about their "birth tree" for heaven's sake.

"Of practical talent and intelligence"
I'm practically flattered.
______

* - and Bill Luse as well.

  posted by TS @ 09:40  
June 16, 2005 

 
Didn't Take...

..any pictures at the beach this time, but here are a couple found via the miracle of the internet:





One investing "no-brainer" is beach front property since, as the cliche goes, they're not making any more. Of course buying property would be way too expensive but since there are real estate investment mutual funds, why not coastal property mutual funds? If it were properly diversified (in order to avoid hurricane & storm problems) it'd surely have almost no risk while promising fantastic longterm returns.

UPDATE: I may be a little late to the party. But I like how back in March that analyst singled out Archstone Com Trust as a bad buy. It's since appreciated 10%. Weathermen are right more often than stock analysts.

  posted by TS @ 11:43  
June 15, 2005 

 
    Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Like many of you, I affect a high-minded disdain for such things, but for all that I could not turn away from the spectacle. And, to be honest, I’m glad I didn’t. First, there was the young lady in a halter top with a sign reading 'Poland Loves Michael’ – that was almost worth the whole thing right there. Then, I got to see a mindlessly jubilant middle-aged blonde woman awkwardly release a white dove into the air. Sublime lunacy – in the end, that’s what Jacko’s all about. 

- Thomas of 'Endlessly Rocking'

None. Why? Because "blog" covers a number of different formats. To criticize blogs for being free from traditional journalistic standards, for example, doesn't wash because most blogs aren't attempts to do journalism – they're opinion.

- Amy Welborn, on Ignatius Insight, answering the question "what are the problems with blogs?"

God bless anybody who happens to wander in! BTW, I'm doing OK in my wild-n-wacky little ecumenical world. Thank God for Francis de Sales and his uber-useful Introduction to the Devout Life. He's helped me weather attitudinal storms and harsh judgments, plus given sensible guidelines for avoiding scrupulosity and unnecessary guilt. 

- Kathy the Carmelite, posting after a loooonnnng absence

I find it extremely annoying that (a) I loathe astrology and (b) I fit the Taurus personality almost exactly.) 

- Bob of "Trousered Ape"

A Google search for "baby laughing in his sleep" yielded no results. I thought there should be at least one. 

- explanation of blog title "Baby laughing in his sleep" at notgoodwithnames.typepad.com

In the ongoing dispute over whether burying a statue of St. Joseph is categorically superstitious, a few people have suggested rules for how to tell the difference between a superstitious act and a non-superstitious one. I don't know that I have a general rule that applies in all cases, but I do have an idea for a heuristic in the present controversy: if the person performing the act views it as a devotional act pleasing to the saint, intended as a concrete act of devotion in conjunction with asking for the saint's intercession, it is not superstitious. If the person performing the act views it as something that compels the saint to grant a wish like a genie summoned from a bottle, it is superstitious. 

- Zippy of Zippy Catholic

On the flight to Atlanta, the safety briefing says federal regulations prohibit "conjugating" in the aisles. 

- Terrence Berres of "The Provinical Emails"

What on earth is left for the groom to do? 

- St. Augustine in "The City of God", mocking the pagan Roman marriage ceremony, which invoked one god for this and one god for that including the "god of erection" and "god of penetration"

The saints are like the stars. In his providence Christ conceals them in a hidden place that they may not shine before others when they might wish to do so. Yet they are always ready to exchange the quiet of contemplation for the works of mercy as soon as they perceive in their heart the invitation of Christ. 

-- St. Anthony de Padua

For as Christ's sufferings overflow through us, so through Christ does overflow encouragment. 

- St. Paul, 2 Cor 1:7

A life that is full of such extremes is emblematised perfectly in the popular image of him holding the Child Jesus. In St. Anthony, great learning met meekness, nobility met poverty, orthodoxy met charity, and miracles met faith: in the miraculous apparition of the Child Jesus, Heaven met earth. Of course, as any Catholic can tell you, Heaven meets earth everyday, in every Mass and every Communion; but not everyone receives such a confirmation of their faith in Christ. Sancti Antonii, ora pro nobis. 

- Enbrethiel of Sancta Sanctis

  posted by TS @ 09:20  
 

 
All Time Favorite Baseball Cards (all cards are TOPPS unless otherwise designated)

 1) 1961 Mickey Mantle
 2) 1972 Pete Rose 
 3) 1971 Roberto Clemente
 4) 1971 Johnny Bench
 5) 1972 Willie Stargel
 6) 1961 Whitey Ford
 7) 1972 Frank Robinson
 8) 1954 Ted Williams (Bowman)
 9) 1971 Hank Aaron
10) 1971 Nolan Ryan

  posted by TS @ 09:09  
 

 
Without a blue dress...

What's fascinating is where to draw that reasonable doubt line. With the Jackson case - after watching more television drivel tonight - I guess I have to agree that it's a close call. But let's look at what is uncontested:

1) boy slept with Jackson in Jackson's bed
2) the fingerprints of both Jackson and the victim are on a homosexual porn magazine in Jackson's bedroom

With number 2, you can no longer assume that Jackson is an ingenue. It shows he's not asexual nor a misunderstood Peter Pan. He has the adult drives. And he has accusers. Is Michael Jackson like Ghandi, who slept with naked women in order to train himself in greater self-control? Now that's doubtful.

  posted by TS @ 09:01  
 

 
A June Kind of Day

How sweet to come home on an ordinary Tuesday night, still whipped from yesterday's 3.5 mile run and from vacation’s excesses, and to linger in the lingering sun, an equinoxical treat where even the seven o'clock sun is for real, here to lay and let the body cells remember Hilton Head Island almost as if I were there again.

I soak in the preternatural beauty of the maples. They stand on pedestals as the age, their roots so voluminous that they inadvertently create a platform. How cool is that? "Only God could make a tree" and truer words were never spoke. It’s hard to think of anything natural more strikingly beautiful. The interplay of striving branch and green accompaniment is like a symphony. It reminds me of the old oaks and beech at Miami University, where the trees shade scholars as they move inexorably to graduation.

Saw yesterday the first lightning bug, the nightly lanterns that signal the true beginning of summer. They alight as they will, or light as the Spirit wills, and it's poignant to see them again as if they were old friends revisiting from long ago. I marvel at how orderly their arrival; every year within a few days, always this, a week or two into sweet June.

  posted by TS @ 19:35  
June 14, 2005 

 
But What Would John McCain Do Without His Mission?

...might I humbly suggest saving unborn children? From NY Times, Q & A from Stephen Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, authors of "Freakonomics": 
Q. 10. Based on your observations of human nature and the actions and reactions in which we engage, do you believe that there is a way to end the pernicious influence of "Big Money" in our political campaigns — or is this a feature of democracy that will always be with us?
— Alexander Clemens, San Francisco

A. To be honest, we do not think Big Money is as pernicious as others do. In "Freakonomics," we show how campaign spending does not affect elections nearly as much as most people think. And there is not that much evidence that politicians vote differently as a result of donations (many donations go to politicians who are already sympathetic to Big Money's causes). Our hunch is that Big Money already knows that money doesn't matter that much in politics. Why do we say that? Because there are relatively low limits on how much Political Action Committees can contribute to campaigns, yet hardly any PAC's max out on these limits. Relative to the government budget, campaign spending is tiny. We believe that Big Money has figured out they don't get a very good return on contributions, so they don't give that much.

  posted by TS @ 16:14  
 

 


  posted by TS @ 15:07  
 

 
Random Thoughts

Discouragement is part of that wide road that Jesus mentions in the gospel. There’s nothing easier than discouragement given the daily news and our personal experience. But "discouragement is not from God" said St. Ignatius of Loyola. And if we see the seemingly routine nature in which God lovingly forgives we will want to do no less. The wonder of the sacrament is its generosity and ubiquity, like the farmer sowing costly seed everywhere, not just on soil that looks to be a "good risk" but everywhere, willy-nilly, on paths here and there and everywhere...

  posted by TS @ 13:32  
 

 
Ham's Grand Adventure

For those following the saga of Ham of Bone (i.e. KTC & Bill Luse), he's pursuing his dream!

A local director and producer of commercials read his screenplay and liked it and they are going to produce a couple seven-minute segments of the Cheapskate to pitch to Rich GuysTM in a bid to have the whole thing financed.

Ham has landed professional actors, thus saving the film from utter ruin by having myself and him in lead roles.

  posted by TS @ 09:01  
 

 
MJ & "The Situation"
     ...or breaking my pledge that this blog be Michael Jackson-free

Well, to paraphrase Baretta, don't do the crime if you aren't a celebrity. But is it the great lawyer you can hire or is it your fame? Scott Peterson got a great lawyer but wasn't famous and was convicted. With Martha Stewart it went the other way, although I think that just proves that juries will punish hubris. Celebrity trumps non-celebrity but snobbishness trumps all. And Michael Jackson, O.J. and Blake came off as sufficiently humble during their trials. It helps if you can act; both Simpson & Blake know how to woo an audience. 

I'm wondering if part of the reason for the acquitals is disbelief that someone we "invite into our homes" could do such heinous things. Connecting this to the abuse scandal, I remember hearing that some parishes were actually upset that their abusing priest was not allowed to continue in his ministry. A priest can be a sort of quasi-celebrity figure in a congregation and perhaps either there was disbelief that he was an abuser or a desire to instantly forget what he did even to the ludicrous point of putting young children in harm's way. It's all quite a head-shaker. With the Jackson case, you had two brothers testifying (whom the jury presumably believed were lying), and you had the unchallenged evidence of Jackson & the boy's prints on the same porn mag. 'Twould seem an uphill battle for the defense, at least if your name was Roger Smith. 

But my hunch is that most of these celeb trials are won or lost in jury selection and experts handpick the jury they want. They know body language and can read us like a book. When you combine that with the fact that we are like sheep, easily led by an charismatic lawyer, than you see how the cards favor the defendant in celebrity trials.

  posted by TS @ 22:10  
June 13, 2005 

 
News You Can't Use has been updated...

  posted by TS @ 22:07  
 

 
The Year of the Eucharist

“The Word Among Us” this month has a good reflection concerning the Eucharist: 
When Jesus said, “this is my blood that has been poured out for the forgiveness of sins,” it is certain that this blood offering contained an element of protection. Back in Egypt, when God had Moses prepare for the angel of death, he told him to have the people take some of the blood from their Passover sacrifice and put it “on the two doorposts and the lintel” of their homes. “When I see the blood,” God promised, “I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you” (Exodus 12:7,13)...These essays would be incomplete unless we ask the question, “Given all that the Eucharist does for us, and all that is ours in the new covenant, why is the church in the state it is in?” Why is there so much division? Why is there so much selfishness and disobedience? Why is there so much complacency? 

While the answers to these questions are long and complex, one thing is clear: Unity in the church is integrally linked with an ever deepening appreciation of the Eucharist...Communion heightens communion. 

  posted by TS @ 15:41  
 

 
The Old Law & the New

It must be evidence of some personal flaw that I like Andrew Greeley's non-fiction so much. Even when he aggravates & grates (Exhibit A: in his 1970 The Jesus Myth he eschews distinctions between mortal and venial sins while in his '99 book Futhermore! he says that voting for Bush might be a mortal sin. So it would seem the categories are still useful when it comes to politics if not fornication.) But the guy can write and The Jesus Myth is strewn with interesting observations that will annoy just about everybody (which makes them seem more truthful). An example:
...Joachim Jermias notes that there have been two misunderstandings of the ethics enunciated in the [Sermon on the Mount]. I will call one misunderstanding "Catholic" and the other "Protestant". The Catholic misunderstanding is to see the ethical ideal laid down by the Sermon as a counsel of moral perfection rather than a strict moral imperative. Those who wish to or are able to are strongly encouraged to live by the Sermon on the Mount, but it is not expected of all men. 

According to the Protestant aberration, the Sermon is indeed a description of a strict moral imperitative, but one which man cannot possibly respond to. Therefore, when faced with both the imperative and his own weakness, man has no choice but to throw himself to the mercy of God and plead for forgiveness for his inadequacy. 

Both interpretations assume that Jesus is in fact laying down an ethical code, more noble indeed than that of the Pharisees, but fundamentally a code demanding maximum effort to see that each of the regulations is honored. But, as Jeremias observes, if we look at the life described in the Sermon on the Mount in its proper context, it does not represent an ethical code at all. It is a description of eschatological reality. The "hunger" and "thirst" are not physical; they are a yearning for God's kingdom. The "mourning" is not for earthly suffering but for the fact that the kingdom has not yet been fulfilled completely. So the Sermon on the Mount is a description of how those who positively respond to the invitation of the kingdom will be able to live...The Sermon on the Mount does not present a moral or ethical code that must be adopted...it is rather the way those who have decisively chosen for the kingdom will in fact behave.
The more reliable Cardinal Ratzinger, in his excellent Many Religions - One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World, says that "Where the conflict between Jesus and the Judaism of his time is presented in a superficial, polemical way, a concept of liberation is derived that can understand the Torah only as a slavery to external rites and observances." He goes on to quote the catechism, which defends the Pharisees:
This principle of integral observance of the Law not only in letter but in spirit was dear to the Pharisees. By giving Israel this principle they had led many Jews of Jesus' time to an extreme religious zeal. This zeal, were it not to lapse into "hypocritical" casuistry, could only prepare the People for the unprecedented intervention of God through the perfect fulfillment of the Law by the only Righteous One in place of all sinners. 
And later: 
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure, where faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues. The Gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father, through forgiveness of enemies and prayer for persecutors, in emulation of the divine generosity.

  posted by TS @ 09:27  
 

 
Benson

The great convert & writer R.H. Benson wrote something that makes sense given that the problem of depression seems more prevalent these days (although I'm thinking a lot of that is environmental factors - an agricultural society is somewhat protective; melancholy has always a problem for sedentary scholar types). Anyway, Benson wrote something that might be applicable to some: 
"I would say that 'subjective prayer' and self-reproach, and dwelling on one's temporal and spiritual difficulties, is not good at times [of depression]; but that objective prayer, e.g. intercessions, adoration, and thanksgiving for the Mysteries of Grace, is the right treatment for one's soul." 

  posted by TS @ 22:24  
June 12, 2005 

 
GOTQ

Naomi Riley in “God on the Quad” says that what divides Catholics is not the liturgy or view of matters sexual but their take on ecumenism. An example is whether to avoid prostelyzing Jews –liberals are comfortable with that while conservatives would ask why prohibit Jews from the truth? I wonder if the true divide – caution you are entering a Bias Zone – is more that conservatives see the church as their parent (i.e. Mother Kirche). Conservatives accept Church rules just as we accepted our mother's rules because we believed her when she said it was for our own good. We brushed our teeth as children trusting that the temporary boredom of the action promised some future unseen good. But I have trouble remembering the last time a progressive wanted the Church to do something that was for some spiritual good that wasn't attached to some obvious temporal benefit. Not that I've given much thought. Remember, you entered a Bias Zone. 

“God in the Quad” is a very interesting read. She mentions how not all students at Thomas Aquinas College are Catholics but that “many will (convert) after they read Augustine’s “City of God” their sophomore year.” Alas, another classic book I haven’t read. (Jeff Culbreath wants to read it too. I will if you do? Can I get a witness?) She says the great debate at Thomas Aquinas College is Plato vs. Aristotle. Since Augustine used Plato and Aquinas used Aristotle, is this the source of the of the Augustine/Thomist divide (happily, an unthreatening divide) in the Church? Knowing little of Augustine and Thomas and less of Plato and Aristotle, I’m wondering how the Augustinianian/Thomist debate manifests itself “one layer up”, i.e. when you get to my undereducated level.

  posted by TS @ 20:35  
June 11, 2005 

 
Hilton Head Trip Log

I was on an hour hike, a break on the way to Hilton Head S.C., in the North Carolina mountains when I realized it had been too long. There was the ache of my forgetfulness of the Great Smokies, the trails flooded with rhododendron and glistening with washed moss, the ferns, the conifers, the mountain streams with hue’d rocks. It triggered a contemplative episode years ago when on a five hour hike I’d sat on a rock in a creek stream with the Beatles song running through my mind:

Sit beside a mountain stream
Watch her waters rise!
Listen to the pretty sound of music
as she flies.

The air was drunk on moonshine and superoxygenated by a trillion photosynthesizing leaves. It led to a sense of awe but awww there’s the rub: "sense" of awe. Awe by senses. Awe for things you can’t see is of more value. But nature is in her glory here and the slow arching hawks seem to mock men who would deny the goodness of creation. 

Hiking the hills not far from the Virginia border reminds me of the 19th century and of Virgina’s Civil War battlefields. I long to see the battlefields again. I remember how the pastor at my parent's church went to Gettysburg five or six consecutive years, each time spending a week there. People can be interesting. I would’ve thought that might be just a tad of overkill. And one might get the impression this pastor, with such reverence for history and patriotic impulse would be a traditionalist in matters religious. But instead he's happy to plant doubts about where Jesus was born (not big on Bethlehem) and he once called Mother Angelica "an eccentric old nun who’s trying to pretend Vatican II didn't happen." People can be hard to predict.

I came across a restored homestead originally built in the 1850s. The cabin and farm are complete with information posts with pictures of the settlers, the Hutchinson's, and they look so alien in their dress and manner. They squint with those hard 19th century faces, so blank and devoid of expression. On the drive there I passed a Baptist church with a sign that said "This church rated PG: pure gospel". Cute. Corny, down here where they "drink the corn from a jar" (although presumably not the good Baptists). I can’t help thinking how times have changed. These hardscrabble pioneers who drank the doctrine of that hard Calvinistic whiskey are the spiritual fathers of those who put up corny signs. 

Driving to Stone Mountain State Park I get a vertiginous view of a green mountain with a house on the top and it looked like Heaven: distant but possible. And within these mountain walls I can see how residents might have a greater sense of place. Their land is marked not by an arbitrary boundary like the farmer's in Iowa, but by the personal green castle walls of their holler. So when the Civil War came, even while not having much slavery to protect, they might've felt the threat of Northern will more keenly? Stone Mountain is aptly named. It’s like one of the stones from a stream got misplaced while at the same time getting magnified a million times. A big billiard ball of gray stone, it was a wonderously large and yet...and yet like a grass blade to an ant, big only to us. 
_

I-95 in South Carolina is the cruelest highway. The scenery is relentless and ever the same, the highway flanked by seemingly identical pines of identical heights. And so it goes for fifty, sixty, ninety miles. It’s like in cartoons or old Westerns where they show the same repeating background. The smaller “blue highways” that William Least Heat Moon wrote of are so much more interesting. In just the few miles we drove to escape a backup on I-95 we saw a house with a six-foot Marine Corp rug hanging upright and on the other side was the same-sized Confederate flag. Just stuck in the middle of their front yard as if it grew there. 
_

“And suddenly you’re in a different place,
Where everything seems to happen in waves” 

– Elizabeth Bishop, from poem “Letter to NY”

I’ve discovered it's not easy to be leisurely in advance. Even knowing that loads of time stretch out before me I seem unable to proactively tap into that future lack of hyper. In the pell-mell rush to the beach, I carry gargantuan quantities of stuff and smash my foot with the cooler. As the song goes, "we’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow." I recommend getting there slow so that you’ll be ready to take it slow when you get there. 

And pick your location carefully. Finding a good spot is akin to curing cancer – possible, but unlikely. I try to avoid those playing music since it’s inevitably bad music. Only in Heaven do you hear the Chieftains. I also try to avoid immodestly dressed women, which is like trying to avoid Italians at an Italian festival. There's more butt exposed here than at a plumber's convention. Observational prowess is no virtue here in the Island of the Nearly Unclothed Female, and I’m hoping that the propulsive nature of words will serve as a subliminative. I do my part for beach beautification and the prevention of salacious thoughts by eschewing Speedos and thongs. I give and I give. 

Today we experienced that rarest of birds: the man who can’t stop talking to his wife. He’s in his late 50s and via the miracle of a walkman "I know nothing" (say like Klink.) But my wife unavoidedly hears his opinions on everything from anti-depressants (a waste, no one should take them) to the European Constitution (not really). Bloviators are uncommon on the beach (pot, kettle, I know), but when it turned out that it wasn't his wife he was talking to I felt oddly relieved, for no man talks to his wife that much. Which is fortunate for wives everywhere.
_

Like Mexican cliff divers
pelicans plummet,
reminding me of Tennyson’s line
“And like a thunderbolt he falls”.
_

There’s a map of Europe on my chest etched in scarlet from missed splotches of sunscreen. Sicily hurts. It already seems a long time since we arrived and I noted Applebaum’s "Gulag" in the time share; I was surprised someone left such an expensive and unlikely beach read there. I usually end up leaving the beach in far better physical shape than when I arrive. Beach bling (skin is bling to the male eye) makes me restless so instead of reading I run, bike and swim. Every day a triathlon. Philosopher/runner/writer George Sheehan once wrote that racing is the love-making of running, so while out for a jog I spied a bunch of folks lining up for a race and I found that irresistible so I lined up myself, about ten yards away. It’s a sprint to the surf, about a hundred meters, and the six and seven year olds all wear expressions of great seriousness. At the finish line is the day care worker or teacher and we’re off! Those kids really have a good first step and I find myself lagging early. Teach gives me a wide grin as I hit the water. 

My two o’clock rule (before which I’ll drink no ale) feels arbitrary and wicked here under the blazing beachball sun. My IQ falls twenty points under this gladsome sun tide; I was reading “God in the Quad”, hardly “War & Peace”, but after going outside it feels near burdensome. I sift “Treasure Island” and “Sanibel Flats” to the top of my book bag. 

My wife moves the cooler to use as a foot stool. I’m genuinely impressed. I say, “all the time I’ve been down here and I didn’t think of that!”

“Babe, I’m an expert relaxer,” she coolly replies.

But I should never mistake this for retirement. Three beers and a beach in front of me. Nay, retirement is probably shuffleboard and dyspepsia. I’m reading “Early Bird”, the account of a 28-year old joke-writer for David Letterman who burned out on his job and went to live in a Florida retirement community. The book vaguely depresses me, for reasons I can quite put my finger on. And yet it is extremely absorbing and witty and humorous. But the depiction of the community sounds so frivolous and superficial. Both too much seriousity and too much frivolity wear. Balance, where art thou? 

The people who live there are depicted one-dimensionally. They gossip and talk about their health problems. There’s no mention of the spiritual. It reminds me of spring break for college kids – there seemed to be no there there. No family, no cooking (the film Babette’s Feast makes cooking seem sort of holy, but at the very least there is something indicative of “roots”), no religion. 

Those who age best, it seems, are those professors who still love learning and still enthuse over Romantic poetry. Or retired symphony conductors who lead a small town band for free. Or St. Vincent de Paul members who give out bread and go to daily Mass. Or priests, whose power to consecrate remains undiminished. 

Later, I’m sitting in a chair that the ocean is slowly reclaiming. The guy next to me is fishing and reels something in. It’s a small fish, small enough that I might’ve confused it for bait. He turns towards me and I give him a look of sympathy, as if to say, "aw that’s too bad." But he’s proud, nay, he’s exultant. He’d turned towards me not for sympathy but congratulations. 
_

Buy mass market paperbacks 
for the scent alone;
where memories of Weekly Reader
mix with coffee and scone.
_

The island soil is black and crumbly, richly allusive of all that went into the making of it. The dank smell of decomposition is present in the moist green interior, all things fermenting, just as thousands of grapes make up a wine. One state to the north, up in the mountains, there are patches of soil the color of lamb’s blood, little splotches of farm-ploughed hillock. The only thing in nature that seems unnaturally straight is the ocean’s unblinking horizon. 

I wonder: do artists have a completely different painting experience when painting nudes compared to flowers and landscapes? Is one a different aesthetic experience? Are they like the Scripture scholars who toil over minutiae without fever for the Lover it describes? Do they paint nudes and landscapes for similar or different reasons or does that depend on the painter? 

The picture of the island I’d most like to take but have never gotten around tp it would be the newspaper stand where the stairs from the time-shares end and the parking lot begins. There the expectation of pleasure is intense, the unseen ocean just beyond, the sun streaming triumphantly from the gloom of the dark stairs: 

Brine-blud
son of an Englishmun
blind, gum’
here in the summer sun,
bliss this
plenteous shall miss.

Hie thee blood,
to the wave’s rud!
Rhythm thee,
to the break of the sea!
The sail, lo’
hail, so
hear the whale blow!
_

WWSHD?

Went to Mass and saw Scott Hahn and family. They obviously go down the same week we do every year since this is probably the fourth time I’ve seen him there. I know I wouldn’t want to preach a homily with Scott in the audience if I were the priest! But the padre makes the point in the homily that St. Matthew would probably have not volunteered for martyrdom, as he eventually did, when he was first called by Christ. This was said to illustrate the need for ongoing conversion and how it’s a process, not an event. To “look ahead” and wonder if we are ready for some huge task like being tortured or killed for Christ is probably not a good idea; better to just take whatever challenge comes to us. Dickens, in “Bleak House”, has an ingénue say, “I thought it best to be as useful as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually and naturally expand itself.”

Saw statue of Mary at Holy Family Church with exposed heart, red and large. It’s slightly distracting but then I consider: what more handy symbol of our Mother’s love? Her claim to fame is not the white with which she is robed or her veil, but her maternal heart, her love for God and us. 
_

Grim is the last day
when clouds fall
a scatter of drops
“this is what it sounds 
like when doves cry”. 

The problem with Hilton Head is it becomes improbably beautiful in inverse proportion to how much time remains. Am I more given to reverie because I’m finally relaxed, or because it’s the last day? Meanwhile, the water appears the color of envy, washed white by foam clouds...

  posted by TS @ 19:40  
 

 
Various

Overheard our secretary say..."Short weeks are always the longest." So true and yet so counterintuitive.

In news that will be minutiae to everyone but me, one of the Dominicans (Fr. Tancrell) at St. Patrick's downtown is leaving. He said Mass with such beautiful reverence though mostly he was the confessor (lines are long even on weekdays there!). It'll be sad to see him go. I googled his name and saw that he responded once to Diogenes. Small world. How beautifully he wrote: "The Blood of Jesus spilled in the fire of charity exceeds our deepest concept of power and remedy."

  posted by TS @ 07:28  
June 3, 2005 

 
Good Advice from an Irish Grandmother.. 

...to her grandson before he travels Ireland on a donkey. From Kevin O'Hara's Last of the Donkey Pilgrims:
"Days are lengthening now, but when they grow short, you'll need to seek your byre early. Before knocking don't be afraid to say a decade of the Rosary. There's great power in prayer, and the `Hail Mary' will ease your countenance and give you the look of trust at any door." 

"Amen, Grannie."

"And always do your best to attend Mass on Sunday. There's a wealth of grace in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Imagine, you'll partake the Holy Bread in churches all about the country. Do you know, I've heard Mass in sixty-two different churches during my time?"

"Sixty-two!" I was truly astonished. "You've kept track?"

"Why do you find that so strange? I read in the Irish Press how a Dubliner boasted of having a drink in all of Dublin's seven hundred forty-three pubs? Wouldn't he have been better off going to seven hundred forty-three different churches?" 

"I suppose so," I conceded, though I knew which feat I was more likely to accomplish.

  posted by TS @ 19:36  
June 2, 2005 

 
Brad Paisley

...is one of my favorite country artists. From his pro-life song to his fishing song to his latest on alcohol, he can knock 'em out:
And since the day I left Milwaukee
Lynchburg, Bordeaux, France
Been makin' the bars
Lots of big money
And helpin' white people dance...
Alcohol

  posted by TS @ 19:12  
 

 
Quote

On why the British left seems willing to make common cause with hardline Islam:
We must always remember the Western radical intellectual’s wish to identify with the world’s rising and most frightening power. Coleridge spoke of Napoleon’s British admirers possessing a ‘prostration of the soul’. But British Napoleonists differed from British Stalinists, and were similar to today’s Muslamists in one respect. They did not want the foreign power to rule Britain. Byron said that Napoleon was his hero ‘on the Continent; I don’t want him here’. Those feminist columnists and academics — proclaiming Islam’s great past — do not want to have to go veiled in their native Camden Town or Islington. Their game is to use Islam to demoralise Western bourgeois life.

--Frank Johnson in the London Spectator

  posted by TS @ 13:48  
 

 
Serving My Customers

You might recall my adventures in the company cafeteria. Well today I went down for food and when it was my turn I said to the cafeteria worker, "roast beef". 

He looks up, recognizes me, smiles broadly and says, "hey you have to say the whole thing!".

But this time the menu just said roast beef. Not "Roast Beef Medallions garnished with parsley and stewed with fried okra". And I was tired and couldn't think of an embellishment. So I said, "well I thought that joke might be getting old."

"No, it makes my day!"

I melted. I have a mission.

  posted by TS @ 12:53  
 

 
Guide to Liturgies

I like Tom's colorful graphs but don't feel confident enough in my gif-making skills to create my own. So I thought I'd borrow his even though it doesn't really fit. But it is easy on the eyes. And if you can't borrow from a fellow St. Blogger then who can you?

  Liturgies 
 Color State 
 Reverent  
 Less than reverent 
 Tridentine 
 Novus Ordo 
 Byzantine Catholic /Orthodox 
 (not used) 
 
Some 'splanation is in order. The pastor at the Byzantine Catholic church I attend often mentions that "we are a Resurrection People" (a subtle distancing from the Roman rite's emphasis on the cross even though this Byzantine church is in communion with Rome?). Anyway, that phrase tends to make me cringe since normally "Resurrection people" gets bandied about by liturgists who think James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" is an excellent opening hymn. And although I've gone to only two Tridentine liturgies and thus am unqualified to pronounce judgment, my initial take is that it is very reverent if a bit gloomy (represented by the red hue). But the Ruthian Byzantine liturgy is extremely reverent while also maintaining the cheerfulness of a "Resurrection People" (represented by the green hue). The two liturgies represent the "two lungs of the Church" as Pope John Paul II wrote. "Such a wealth of praise, built up by the different forms of the Church's great tradition, could help us to hasten the day when the Church can begin once more to breathe fully with her 'two lungs', the East and the West" (John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 34).

Fine Print:
--I define reverent here as recognizing that God is Holy, i.e. Other, i.e. not us.
--Not all Novus Ordo liturgies fall into the "Less than reverent" half of course. (A drawback of using someone else's picture.)

  posted by TS @ 12:26  
 

 
   Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Q is for Quote you like – “Never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking.” Don Corleone in the original Godfather. Good advice. Which I violate daily. Right here. - Ellyn of Oblique House

You see, if it isn't some external crisis, I can conjure enough profound internal crises to plunge me into my semi-annual funk. I don't think I'll do that this year--it's tiresome and tedious and not conducive to my own mental health. - Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli

Well, it's always awkward to have to correct the Pope, but isn't that why God made Dominicans? - you know who said this :)

As Thoreau said, we are fools to box up one of the most beautiful sights in the world—a living fire—and keep it in the cellar. Smash the television set, turn out the lights, build a fire in the fireplace, move the family into the living room, put a pot on to boil some tea and toddy and have an experiment in merriment, a sudden, unexpected hearth, the heart and first step in the restoration of a home... - John Senior, author of "The Restoration of Christian Culture"

And, mirabile dictu, about halfway through Mass I got a gentle nudge to the ribs. In a whisper, I heard: "Look, Daddy--I'm praying!" So she was. - Dale Price of "Dyspeptic Mutterings" on a first trip to a Tridentine Mass. (Funny, that's my problem with prayer. As soon as I'm aware that I'm praying, I'm no longer praying.)

I don't want to blog but I would feel like the wicked and slothful servant who hid his one talent in the earth. That talent—perhaps quite common—is a singularity that leads me to make and write things that would otherwise not exist—not because they are difficult but because they are not wanted, at least before they are made, and perhaps for a long time afterwards. But the Giver of the talent wants a return on it, and I try to give it back with interest. Actually, of course, it is not my talent, but “thy talent”—“his lord’s money.” If I have identified it right, I have obeyed my vocation; if not, then, still, “all is grace.” Unlike you I crave an audience and praise, but I have had enough of both to know that I shall only be satisfied by One. - Leo Wong on St Blog's Parish Hall on why he blogs

I have noticed that when it comes to discussions on liturgical music and church architecture on my blog and on others that there is a direct correlation between the theological views of the commenter and whether they like or dislike something pertaining to those subjects.... Why is that? If beauty is supposed to be so subjective and in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, then why does opposing or support develop along theological fault lines? - Jeff of The Curt Jester

Our conversation grew out of the sense that God did not so much need Christ to die as we needed Christ to die. I think of it in terms of what Jesus told the Jewish people regarding the law of divorce. It was not that divorce was a good thing, or even really an acceptable thing, but rather that it was a thing granted to them because of their hardness of heart. If there had been any other way to break the hardness of the human heart other than the death of God Himself, God would have used it. Indeed, through time He sent prophet after prophet after prophet to tell the people of Israel how much He loved them and how enduring His love was. They could not hear this--they killed the prophets or ignored them. The hardness of the human heart sets diamond to shame. - Steven Riddle

[Blogs] can give a sense of communion to Catholics who for whatever reason don't feel close to their fellow parishioners. (This has some obvious limits beyond which bad things start to happen.) - Tom of Disputations on why some St. Bloggers blog 

Personally, I find it outstanding that Shelley (of all the Romantics, Shelley!) was so well attuned to the idea of grace that he could write a poem that shares themes with St. Therese's The Story of a Soul and Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ. Shelley is spot on about many things, too. He recognises, for instance, that we are completely dependent on (God's) grace in our spiritual lives, but also, paradoxically, the only way to stay faithful to this grace is to shoulder on when it is denied to us, and to trust that it will not let us down if we remain true to it. - Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis

  posted by TS @ 07:45  
 

 
An Individual in Community

From Ignatius of Loyola: Pilgrim Saint by Jose Idigoras
Martin Luther had just radically liberated everybody from the mediation of the Church. The Manresa pilgrim [St. Ignatius] did not wrestle with a similar temptation, nor did he ever contemplate taking such a step. Just the opposite: he participated in the sacraments, he immersed himself in traditional devotions, and he took his problems to his confessor, whose direction he blindly obeyed. At the same time, he clearly understood that apart from all of these matters, God and God alone taught him as a schoolmaster teaches a young boy. He had no fear of the Church, which, even though ever suspicious of possible illusions, would one day choose the following passage from the book of Deuteronomy (32:12) as the Entrance Antiphon for the Mass of St. Therese of Lisieux: "The Lord nurtured and taught her...The Lord alone was her leader." In this same sense, the Lord was the director and teacher of Ignatius. God did not teach him a new lesson. This pupil that He was illuminating, however, now seemed to see new meanings in old truths he had learned from the study of his catechism...He learned the infathomable depths of things about which we speak today in terms that have all but worn out by overuse.

  posted by TS @ 07:40  
 

 
All the Best Gifts are Re-Gifts

There's an icon of Mary Magdalene at the local Byzantine Catholic church and in it she is depicted as holding a vial of oil, representing the scene in Luke's gospel where tradition holds that the sinful woman annointing Christ with oil and wiping his feet with her hair was Mary Magdalene.

And it struck me for the first time that she was not so much showing us her gift to Christ, but was showing us Christ's gift to her - her repentance and love for Him was in some way a gift to her, because all of our gifts are actually re-gifts and apart from Christ we can do nothing.

  posted by TS @ 07:30  
 

 
Knocking In The Dark

When we play the card game "31" at family gatherings we knock on the table if we think we're holding a better hand than at least one other family member. Everyone except the knocker is then given a card and the cards are shown, producing many (temporary) winners and one loser. When there's a lot of family gathered around the table, the odds are pretty slim that you'll be holding the weak hand. So some bold folks might "knock in the dark", which is to say they knock before they've even looked at what they've got, trusting that their unseen hand will suffice.

Today's first reading was astonishingly beautiful. And there was a strong sense that Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, was 'knocking in the dark'. She was praising God even in her darkness, even in her depression, even when she didn't seem to have any particular reason to praise Him:
That day, she grieved, she sobbed, and went up to her father’s room intending to hang herself. But then she thought, ‘Suppose they blamed my father! They will say, “You had an only daughter whom you loved, and now she has hanged herself for grief”. I cannot cause my father a sorrow which would bring down his old age to the dwelling of the dead. I should do better not to hang myself, but to beg the Lord to let me die and not live to hear any more insults.’ And at this, by the window with outstretched arms she said this prayer:
‘You are blessed, O God of mercy! 
May your name be blessed for ever, 
and may all things you have made 
bless you everlastingly.’

  posted by TS @ 12:56  
June 1, 2005 

 
News You Can't Use & Other News

The other silly blog I occasionally update has been updated. The secret service post reflects a real life incident involving my bro in law.... And while on the subject of blogs and bloggers, thanks go to Jeff Culbreath and Jeff Miller (Jeffs and Bills are 50% more likely to read this blog) for mentioning me as a favored read in a recent Ignatius Insight article. (And a note to Mr. Culbreath: thanks to your book meme I read the linked review of "The Restoration of Christian Culture" so memes can't be all bad. God writes straight with...)

  posted by TS @ 10:36  
 

 
What's Really Amazing...

...about the deep throat story is that any three people (or more) in D.C. could keep a secret that long. Very impressive.

  posted by TS @ 10:27  
 

 
Multitudinous Religions

One of the things I liked about baseball when I was a kid was that I thought it was a complete meritocracy. An oasis of utter fairness in an unfair world. Boy was I naive.

I recall arguing with my dad about it. 

"If someone is hitting .282 in Triple A, he'll be brought up before someone hitting .280! A manager won't go against the statistics!"

After all, that would be irrational. I hope I was very young when I said that. At least I wasn't cynical. But I was certainly "insufficiently nuanced" when it came to understanding that a baseball player was more than his batting average.

But even if batting averages were all that mattered, Dad insisted there was some cronyism in the game, some of that "it's who you know" disease, and that came as a complete surprise. Of course the fact that if you were black you couldn't play in the big leagues until 1947 should've been a huge clue. 

Then I recall being shocked yet again that even science - that bastion of supposed objectivity - has to rely on mistaken scientists to die, not to be proven wrong, in order for the scientific world to move forward. (Don't take my word for it - Max Planck said it.)

So this is prelude to saying that it should be no surprise that where there is so much disagreement on what we can see that there will be loads of disagreement on that which we cannot see. Which explains why there are so many religions. I was watching O'Reilly's show last night and he tried to be fair to Scientologists, which was painful to these ears.

Ultimately if there's unity to be found among Christians (for which we can have legitimate hope due to the power of Christ's name) it's obvious it will take supernatural help. But since grace builds on nature we can't eschew apologetics and history and all the things which persuade some. Today's saint, Justin Martyr, was certainly a hero in that regard.

  posted by TS @ 09:02  
 
__________________ 
 
 
Contra Amnesia

Infant baptism, besides being efficacious in its own right (or rite, tee hee) is a powerful instrument against self-righteousness. What purer way is there to say that it is not we who chose God but God who chose us, through the flawed instrument of our parents? One of my favorite images from the Byzantine Catholic liturgy is when the priest prays, 
"We thank You also for this ministry, which You have willed to accept from our hands, even though there stand before You thousands of archangels, myriads of angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, six winged, many-eyed, soaring aloft on their wings."
And so God desires to use human instruments in the sacraments, including Baptism. 

But it seems as though we forget that. John Meehan in Two Towers: The De-Christianization of America and a Plan for Renewal plainly states those who think they are better than de-Christianized cafeteria Catholics are missing something:
Too many Catholics...fail to understand that the gift of Faith is a permanent, indelible mark imprinted on the soul; it cannot be taken away from them. That gift comes from God. They also do not comprehend that growth in knowledge and love of the Deposit of Faith requires systematic instruction, including disciplined training that culminates in a knowledge and love of Christian liturgy. 

As a supernatural gift, baptismal Fatih cannot be lost. But growth in, and development of, that gift can be misdirected or undernourished. In fact, reinforced by the rational choices of one's free will, the kind of catechical instruction that one receives usually determines how he or she lives in particular historical circumstances and cultural conditions.
So there's a bit of amnesia going both ways: the de-Christianized who have forgotten who they are and what they've been given, and the orthodox believers who have forgotten who the de-Christianized are and what they've been given.

This is directed at me of course: I still recoil when I hear John Kerry's name.

  posted by TS @ 20:55  
July 31, 2005 

 
Man Bites Dog Story?

Rev. Richard Neuhaus recommends an Andrew Greeley book.
Greeley throws down the gauntlet in challenging the secularization theories that have dominated the last hundred years and more, especially in the social sciences. “I find no persuasive evidence that either modern or postmodern humankind exists outside of faculty office buildings. Everyone tends to be premodern.” This is the argument that Greeley made at greater length in his 1972 book Unsecular Man, and it is an argument that now appears to have been ahead of its time. 
__

Being a Catholic, says Greeley, is a matter of what one believes, in the sense of doctrines affirmed. But it is more importantly a matter of the sacred stories told in community. “None of the doctrines is less true than the stories. Indeed, they have the merit of being more precise, more carefully thought out, more ready for defense and explanation. But they are not where religion or religious faith starts, nor in truth where it ends.” The experienced Catholic reality is communal stories, rituals, and cultivated sensibilities that engage ultimate truths. 

  posted by TS @ 09:01  
 

 
'I Would Walk 500 Miles'

The Byzantine Catholic liturgy I attend is about twenty five minutes away. But the next time I am wont to complain about that I might think of the father of this man:


Thomas Cogan Jr.   

His father, my great-great-grandfather, emigrated from Ireland but had no nearby church. The following obituary was obtained from the local historical society: 
"The Rev. James P. Ward, who preached the funeral sermon, said: 'Mr. Cogan was known to walk from Glynwood to Piqua to be present at the divine Sacrifice of the Mass. It was his earnest zeal that prompted him to have a church close at hand, and he with others of the same sturdy faith united their efforts and established a pastorate at Glynwood.'"
That's at least thirty miles as the crow flies! Hard to imagine and a bit surreal. It would surely take a minimum of six to eight hours on foot? 
____

But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door     --the Proclaimers

  posted by TS @ 23:07  
July 30, 2005 

 
Offline Generations

Suppose you’ve reached your peak earning power. Suppose you own technological devices your parents don't know exist. Suppose you’re web fluent and are proficient at googling for information or finding & buying old books. Then think how odd it is to imagine that your parents have a knowledge that all the money, books, and internet sites can’t buy: They have time-traveled.

Of course they haven’t time-traveled relative to their existence but they have relative to yours. They have experienced an age we can only read about and they know ancestors we have never met. How odd! In our self-centeredness we might imagine that their lives began when we became aware of ours. They were born at 37, right? 

The young are not used to limits, physical or otherwise. But our elders have experienced another world, one that is neither transferrable nor inheritable. I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s and my parents were born in the '30s and grew up in the '40s. There is no way for me to fully understand what the '40s were like no matter how much I might think I do. Even should I understand what the '40s were like I wouldn't know it, having no frame of reference. Books and photographs help but there is something irreplaceable in actually being there.

That my father was once a child is something I know from a photograph but it is still an abstract thought. I see him, he is smiling shyly, but that is not my father in any material way. Perhaps I'll grant that it is what my father might've looked like when he was young. That he had a mother is another abstract notion since she died before I was born. That he knew her as well as I know my own mother is completely foreign. I don’t have access to him interacting with her and on this earth there’s no password to gain it. There is no way I can imagine what my relationship would've been with her, or how my father's history would've been altered had she lived longer. If minute differences - such as words of praise or criticism that linger - alter us in profound ways, then something as large as an early death can also alter us in profound, if unknowable, ways.

  posted by TS @ 00:31  
 

 
Found Poetry

   Below is the verbatim verbiage printed on a can of Guinness, in reverse order, and without punctuation: 


Guinness Can Poetry  

yourself for Draught
Guinness of magic
the discover now body 
black, deep and head creamy thick 
uniquely the forming
settle to pint
your for moments
few a for wait glass
a into gently
beer the pour immediately
and it open.
___

What especially interests me in this bit o' advertising is how it seems to confirm what my pastor says is modernity's greatest fault: that of looking at everything in the short term. Notice the short term words: "now", "moments", "immediately"...

  posted by TS @ 22:56  
July 29, 2005 

 
The Thrill Is Gone, Baby

Last night was bingo volunteer session number four if you're scoring at home, which of course you're not. And now this vibrant, fascinating subculture is beginning to look the way all vibrant, fascinating subcultures eventually look - like average Uhmericuns spending their time holding daubers. Well they say even nudists forget they're at a nudist colony eventually.

My co-workers are dears. I'd forgotten that I'd used my "you sunk my battleship!" line (best said immediately after hearing the caller say something like B-21) on a different co-worker. Having many co-workers means you can say the same joke multiple times, as long as you don't tell them when they're in a group. So I strive for maximum joke dispersal by telling them separately. There's a tip you can use! Who says this blog isn't useful?

Oh don't get me wrong - I didn't get into the bingo racket for the thrills, chills or the joke-telling. That's all bonus. No, I fully expected the business to be as dry and necessary as tax accounting. The trick is to keep it new, keep it fresh. Like holding your instant winnner tickets in new positions. Or inserting the word "proverbial" into the instant winner ticket name, ala: "King of the Proverbial Mountain". 

That's not to say bingo is now completely bereft of surprises. One lady was smoking a cigarette while at the same time breathing through a air purifier. Or so a co-worker told me. Sounds apocryphal I know. Another lady had a large placard that stated what should be done in the case of a health emergency. Either she's not well or has a problem with hypochondria; I would error on the side of the former. Another grandma had her five grandchildren's pictures, nicely framed, standing athwart her bingo sheets. 

I like the non-smoking room best because there's less smoke in there. I recall back when Bone smoked that I would bring a cigar when we got together so that my good smoke would cancel out his disagreeable smoke. It was like manufacturing my own little force field. But you just can't do that here, so I walk slow when I go by the pipe smoker. You see, my uncle Ed was a pipe smoker and a priest and the fragrance of the pipe is like nothing else. (That was for Jeff.)

The non-smoking room is also good because the grandmothers are so platonically grandmotherly. They look upon me with cherubic faces and make me feel like the platonic ideal of a grandson. 

There is something peaceful about bingo. Everyone is marvelously industrious, including me. There are squares to daub, numbers to call and tickets to sell before we go. And it goes for a good cause. Sounds like a win-win. Unless you lose a lot of money of course.

  posted by TS @ 16:06  
 

 
Who knew...

...that 19th Century Anti-Catholicism could be so darn entertaining? Great find from Dom.

Of this pic, Tom of Disputations writes: "Now, I ask you: Viewed today, does this strike you as better suited for anti-Catholic propaganda, or for diocesan vocation literature?"

  posted by TS @ 10:27  
 

 
Is There Virtue in the Obscure?

How much of reading or writing poetry is a desire towards mindlessness? That last post prompted a revisit of Walker Percy's nonfiction work The Message in the Bottle. Percy, who could probably fairly be called a Thomist, writes that "likeness and difference are canons of discursive thought, but analogy, the mode of poetic knowing, is also cognitive" (uh, what he said):
One is aware of skirting the abyss as soon as one begins to repose virtue in the obscure.

Once we eliminate the logical approximation, the univocal figure, as unpoetic and uncreative of meaning - is it not then simply an affair of trotting out words and images more or less at random in the hope of arriving at an obscure, hence efficacious, analogy? and the more haphazard the better, since mindfulness, we seem to be saying, is of its very nature self-defeating? Such in fact is the credo
of the surrealists...If, as so many modern poets appear to do, one simply shuffles words together, words plucked form as diversified contexts as possible, one will get some splendid effects. Words are potent agents and the sparks are bound to fly. But it is a losing game. For there is missing that essential element of the meaning situation, the authority and intention of the Namer....Once the good faith of the Namer is so much as called into question, the jig is up. There is no celebration or hope of celebration of a thing beheld in common. One is only trafficking in the stored-up energies of words, hard won by meaningful usage. 

It is a pastime, this rolling out of pretty marbles of word-things to see one catch and reflect the fire of another, a pleasant enough game but one which must eventually go stale.
I've written on my blog how the mundane can become fascinating if it's read by someone generations hence. I read gape-jawed of accounts of farm life in the 1800s which, to farmers of the 1800s, would presumably be jaw-gapingly banal. Percy says with respect to the power of words:
A word, by the very fact of its having been lost to common usage or by its having undergone a change in meaning, is apt to acquire thereby an unmerited potency.

  posted by TS @ 09:43  
 

 
Drunk on Poetry & Endorphins: WWAS?* 

* -...what would Aquinas say?

When I was young I was drunk a lot. 

Not on drugs or alcohol but endorphins. Which is what your body produces during exercise, sometimes called "runner's high". (Nowadays I run but not long enough for runner's high to kick in, which is an experience somewhere between going to a bar for one beer and getting a cavity filled sans novocaine.) 

I was thinking about runner's high after reading Tom's comment with regard to drunkenness, "And how like St. Thomas to regard the loss of reason as a penalty, even if it's the end sought."

It occurred to me that the deliberate loss of reason* is far more common than commonly supposed and is certainly not limited to drunkenness. James Fixx, in his Complete Book of Running said that some runners find a trance so deep that they go through stop signs or stop lights and are killed by cars. If that doesn't represent a lack of reason I don't know what does.

Sleep, of course, is another reason defier. But also day dreaming, including the sort of day dreaming prompted by reading poetry. (Is that why Plato wanted to ban poetry?) Art in general, having no utility, might be a candidate. When you go to experience something that takes you outside the body, to "erase the map" as it were, aren't you experiencing a kind of drunkenness? If so, then I'm guessing there are a lot of drunks out there. 

But St. Thomas recognized that value of play, saying that "playful actions themselves considered in their species are not directed to an end: but the pleasure derived from such actions is directed to the recreation and rest of the soul, and accordingly if this be done with moderation, it is lawful to make use of fun." He goes on to say that "reason itself demands that the use of reason be interrupted at times". 

Perhaps it is reasonable to assume that the amount of reason interruptus required by an individual varies, well, by individual.
___

* - dictionary definition is "the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence."

  posted by TS @ 08:55  
 

 
Wrestling with the Concrete
--by Heidi Lynn Staples
_______________________________________ 

Somethings he forgets what is a Fish;
The others joke that he is hard of Herring.
It is on the table. He isn’t used to it. 

He crosses and uncrosses, fidgets
In the lull, in his favorite color;
Somethings he forgets what is a Fish

And which it from widget from midget from midgets
And wanders Every melodies singing—
It is on the table. He isn’t used to it.

In prescription frames with nonprescription lenses,
Canting into the wind of his own undoing,
Somethings he forgets what is a Fish.

In need of an oar or an ore, he offers Clarinet?
He whispers and shimmers about sum thing—
It is on the table, he isn’t used to it.

Hot scolds over shadows, shipness not ships
At all: Is is only he was thinking.
Somethings he forgets what is a Fish;
It is on the table. He isn’t used to it.


From Guess Can Gallop by Heidi Lynn Staples

  posted by TS @ 06:59  
 

 
Via Steven Riddle...
 You scored as Sacrament model. Your model of the church is Sacrament. The church is the effective sign of the revelation that is the person of Jesus Christ. Christians are transformed by Christ and then become a beacon of Christ wherever they go. This model has a remarkable capacity for integrating other models of the church.

Mystical Communion Model
  
 83% 
Sacrament model
  
 83% 
Servant Model
  
 50% 
Herald Model
  
 50% 
Institutional Model
  
 34% 

What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
created with QuizFarm.com 


  posted by TS @ 11:54  
July 28, 2005 

 
Knowledge Is Bliss

Intense religious discussion last night at my sister-in-law's birthday party. To paraphrase Andy Rooney: ever notice how "intense" and "religious discussion" often go together? Might as well be redundant. 

I was listening as interlocuter number 1 defended Muslims, saying that some of his best friends were Muslims and that a religion can't be held responsible for the negative actions of their followers. Interlocuter number 2 disagreed, saying that Islam was the root cause of their terrorist pathologies. (And interlocuter number 2, being the member of a new, young dynamic church with no history or baggage, made the claim with equanimity.) 

I had no choice who to side with if only because the priestly scandal was still fresh on everyone's minds (and was in fact alluded to in the discussion). I sided with interlocuter number 1, saying that the fact that Judas betrayed Christ was evidence that you can be a member of the greatest religion and still badly misrepresent the faith. 

But this isn't an either/or. It's like nature/nuture debate. Part of it is that bad faiths ruin people and part is bad people ruin faiths. Of course I didn't say that; I think through my fingertips and I didn't have a keypad handy (and even with the keypad bat my weight).

The other obligatory target was the Catholic church, said to be still preaching the Old Testament. An ex-Catholic said that his Catholic education consisted of "the Old Testament and Mary." I said I didn't learn too much OT in my classes but I did agree that Catholic education was poor during the '70s. I admitted that I've learned an awful lot post-college that I should've learned at my Catholic high school. Someone else said that the Catholic Church didn't teach the bible - they didn't have a bible study class until they were out of college. I said that that is why Scott Hahn is popular now; he's filling a need.

  posted by TS @ 07:39  
 

 
Ellis on Adams on CSPAN's BookTV

Our second president, John Adams, said that success for a person or a nation carries within it the seeds of demise. One of his biographers, Joseph Ellis, said that Adams thought once the focus moves from producing to consuming the jig is up and that the key is to find a president who will "manage American decline" effectively. Ellis laughed and said you won't hear that on the presidential campaign trail: "hire me and I'll manage American decline effectively!". Ellis said that the fact that GNP growth has slowed over the past few decades shows that the American economy is already not what it used to be during the post-World War II days of hegemony. He also said that just because a nation is declining doesn't mean that decline can't be very gradual.

  posted by TS @ 07:11  
 

 
Charities Dancing With Politics

I've long thought that Israel, at least since becoming a state in 1948, has been far more "sinned against than sinning". To either confirm or contradict this I began reading a book on the history of the Middle East conflict but read to about page sixty. I'm still looking for the Cliff's Notes version. The fact that I'm not that well-informed should disqualify me from commenting but... (here's where you say 'that never stopped you before!'). 

Thanks, you are right. So from my perspective the Wall was long overdue given that Israel has a right to exist and Israelis have a right not to have their limbs removed by a bomb while shopping at a supermarket or riding on a bus. And if a wall helps, then go for it. 

What prompts this post was this, which reminded me of this article in a magazine of a charity giving aid to the Middle East, which points out the negatives of said wall. It seems rather one-sided given the lack of explanation why Israel would go to the great length of building it. One may quibble where it was built, but the relentless provocation of Israel by the Palestinians has been this side of surreal. And Israel won the West Bank in the Six Day War in 1967, after Egypt prompted a pre-emptive strike by (from here): "ordering the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Forces stationed on the Egyptian-Israeli border, thus removing the international buffer between Egypt and Israel which had existed since 1957...[then] Egypt announced a blockade of all goods bound to and from Israel through the Straits of Tiran." 

It seems to me there are far greater grounds for the United States to give Texas & part of California back to Mexico than for Israel to give back the West Bank.

So in a perfect world, the article might've included these paragraphs:
Palestinians inconvenienced by the wall say that they understand the need for Israel to protect itself and know that a wall, in possibly helping to prevent terrorist attacks, will also prevent retalitory bombings by Israel.

"I think the wall is a necessary evil," said one Palestinian woman, "I might not have to worry as much about Palestinian homes being hit by Israeli bombs now. And think of all Israeli children and civilians saved by this wall! No one wants the suicide bombers and if this wall is going to stop one suicide bomber, why then the inconveniences and hassles are worth it!" 

  posted by TS @ 13:59  
July 27, 2005 

 
       

I gotta hand it to Dubya. He came through. May God help him get this guy on the Court! And may he pick somebody just as good when Rehnquist retires! O Lord, hear our prayer for an end to abortion! 

- Mark Shea on Amy's blog concerning the nomination of John Roberts

What made [Sen.] Biden's concern re [Clarence] Thomas's belief in natural law [Biden wanted to make sure that Thomas didn't have any belief in something called 'natural law'] so amusing is that fact that Roe itself is grounded in natural law theory, albeit a seriously misguided varient. An application of pure positive Constitutional law cannot be reconciled with Roe. 

- commenter on Amy's blog

Augustine is easily more heart-felt than Aquinas. Which I appreciate. On the other hand, Aquinas' detachment and even-handedness make Mr. Spock look like a raving hysteric. 

- John Farrell on Amy Welborn's blog

I believe what the Catholic Church teaches not solely--not even, when I'm at my best, primarily--because the alternatives are ugly. Quite often the alternatives are attractive, insofar as they partake in a partial share of the goodness, love, and grace that God offers. I believe what the Catholic Church teaches because, when I'm at my best, I love Jesus Christ, I love God, and I can faintly discern the beauty, hope, and peace He wants for me.

- Eve Tushnet

Lady at the rock who waited for Bernadette,
asthmatic child sleeping in a stone jail.
She met her at Massabielle, this rock
I touch while icy water seeps
in rivulets down the blackened crevices.
She waits to meet me now--
will my daughter have Mass said over me?--
now and at a time soon.
Ashes to ashes

- Excerpt of poem by Sharon Mollerus, via blogger at "Clairity's Place" 

In his talk, Cardinal George raised some interesting questions he felt the Church faced about the compatibility of democracy with the Gospel...He emphasized that in the past, under other governmental structures, laws were imposed on the people and that was a basis for explanation of why they varied so much from the natural law. But with democracy, the people freely choose the laws, yet we still choose laws as immoral as other governmental structures. And that, albeit in a different way, authentic religious liberty is no better protected under democracy than other regimes. Well, that's my loose summary of the comment. And in fairness to Cardinal George, I think he would expand upon the nuances and complexities if time was alotted and wasn't at all suggesting that he didn't have explanations for why democracy produces immmoral laws (i.e., I'm sure the Cardinal is well aware of sin ;-) ). But I thought the topic worthy of reflection. Thoughts? 

- post at "Cahiers Peguy"

Decided to Google Onan some more this morning! (Don't go there!) 

- Elena of "My Domestic Church"; too late! 

So, was my first kiss a Lutheran one, because of the simple *faith* the girl had that I wouldn't turn out to be a total jerk. Or was it more "Catholic", due to all the *works* I had to perform to get her alone and in the dark?

- Protestant commenter Rob on Disputations

Should a blogger get off a good word-lick, he thinks, hopes and prays he might get into Spanning the Globe. When he does, it's often not for the utterance he thought would do the trick, but for one least expected. 

- William Luse, though it's never least expected when STG is mentioned. *grin*

The man who brought American democracy to the Church’s attention was Jacques Maritain, the French convert and philosopher. Maritain, having accepted a teaching position at Princeton before France fell to the Nazis, lived for over a decade in America and published a long essay, "Reflections on America", in which he expresses his deep admiration of the American experiment, and his hope that it could lead to a New Christendom—not the Christendom of the Middle Ages, which cannot be reinstituted, but a different, new, pluralistic order, which upholds human dignity and liberty as its foundational principles.... Thanks to the influence of Maritain, Pope Pius XII became the first pope to speak favorably of democracy, in 1944—eighteen years before the opening of Vatican II, nineteen years before "Pacem in Terris"...I am not going to answer Jack’s question too emphatically—“Is democracy compatible with the Gospel?” I will let the American Bishops do it for me. Aware of the uniqueness of the American experiment, and aware that it could provide a model for re-establishing the social order, the Bishops decreed the following in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884: "We believe that our country’s heroes were the instruments of the God of Nations in establishing this home of freedom." 

- blogger at "Cahiers Peguy"

[She] made me think about this adorable 85 year-old woman I used to sit next to at church, back when I lived in Pasadena and had a real parish.  One day there was an earthquake in the middle of Mass.  My first thought was that the 85 year-old might be so scared, she'd have a heart attack and keeel over on me, and what would I do.  Her first thought?  She squeezed my hand and said, "Just hold on to me.  I'm strong." When I get old (presuming the world is around that long), I hope I'm that kind of old lady. 

- Karen of "Some Have Hats"

  posted by TS @ 11:14  
 

 
A Sap For Happy Endings

Sleep comes in fits and starts for the read-deprived. My dreams feel contrived compared to the ocean that awaits in the bookroom. And some of the stories contained therein nag for their lack of ending.

I spent part of my reading life this weekend caught up in the drama of Isak Dinesen's real life. Hers was an undeniable but often misdirected courage. A natural contrarian, she flailed at whoever was in authority causing her values and beliefs to fluctuate accordingly. Her allergy to the bourgeois in religion would seem to make her good ground for the gospel message if unfit for the Victorian obsession with appearances. But she saw the sexual norms of the bible and church not in terms of heroism but joyless puritanism. 

I follow the ups & downs of her story: 


She has syphilis! 

Oh -- she got it from her philandering husband. 

She divorces him?

No - he divorces her! She'd forgiven him. Wow.

She loves God! 

No - she sold her soul to the devil.
Say what!? Well there are three references in the biography mentioning her vowing herself to Lucifer. Surely she jests? There's little accompanying detail, other than to say that she did it in exchange for receiving her stories. Which makes reading her stories seem like an ill-gotten gain. 

Is there not a symmetry to pacts with Satan compared to our relationship with God?
With Satan:
you choose him, he doesn't choose you

With God:
He chooses you, you don't choose Him

With Satan:
You give him nothing, with the assurance of receiving something (in this life)

With God:
We give him everything, with no assurance of receiving something (in this life)

With God:
eternal life

With Satan:
eternal death
There is the natural - and naturally impossible - desire to discern the state of her soul at the end of her life. One can have no tragedies in life, not if one hopes Hell is empty, though I recognize the futility of that particular bit of cognitive dissonance. Still there's nothing more alarming to a sheep than seeing another one cliff-diving, though admittedly most don't know what they're doing. It is consoling to know we have a Savior who will search for the one sheep amid the hundred.

  posted by TS @ 07:38  
 

 
Could It Happen Today?

The blogger at Annals of Desire asks with regard to this monument: 
"Would today's men have done the same? If they did, would today's women condemn them or praise them?" 
They say the past is a foreign country and that picture affirms it. There is something achingly anachronistic about it, not only in men acting like gentlemen under great stress, but in the expression of gratitude by the women. To be grateful, even if it is for something expected, is as beautiful as it is rare. More here.

  posted by TS @ 22:21  
July 26, 2005 

 
Evolution...

I've been off and on fascinated by the evolution/creationism debate. Here's an interesting excerpt from John Allen's latest:
Even processes that appear random, he said, can have an underlying logic.

“The idea that calling something ‘random’ means that it’s without direction is a mistake,” [Nobel laureate Charles] Townes said. “In a gas, for example, random interaction among particles ensures uniform distribution and temperature. In other words, an unplanned process produces an orderly outcome.”

“Evolution,” Townes said, “is like that. It’s a random process that produces spectacular things.”
And an excerpt from the Vatican’s International Theological Commission document, “Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God.”


In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. 
I can see why it's such a debate. Moderns crave the personal and evolution seems too impersonal for some tastes. Not to mention the long-running debate over scriptural inerrancy, another hot-button issue. Combine the two and voila! From Catholic Answers' Karl Keating: 

Q: I was under the impression that death in the world (all death- plants, animals, and humans) was a fruit of original sin, ie. God did not create death. If this is the case, then how could the Church accept the idea of biological evolution? Since death would have to occur over the course of generations to provide for "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest." Thanks for your time.

A: by Karl Keating: You have brought up one of the difficulties in squaring evolution with the biblical account of the Fall. There have been various attempts to do so. Whether any of them is adequate is for the individual to determine for himself. All the Church teaches is that theistic evolution is not necessarily incompatible with the faith. It doesn't teach that it really happened--or that it didn't.

  posted by TS @ 16:33  
 

 
Putting the Me in Meme

Karen tapped me and so I thought I'd do it from a vacation perspective.

What I was doing 10 years ago...I was experiencing the post-vacational glow, this time after a trip to Texas. We hit Austin, San Antonio, Bandera, & LBJ's ranch. 

Five years ago... Smack dab in the middle of a trip to Richmond, Virgina.

One year ago... a vacational re-run of this year. A 25-mile bike trip day in July.

Yesterday...I walk the dog and there's nothing to pick up his poop with. So I grab something out of the garbage, a small piece of plastic. He goes twice. We shorten the road trip because I'm holding uncovered poop at arm's length. TMI, I know.

  posted by TS @ 16:22  
 

 
Of Pictures

Steven Riddle understands the need to preserve mystery, hence he provides a picture of himself only in shadow. Of course I do not approve. I think every blogger ought to post a clear picture of themselves because my curiosity deserves to be sated.

And so you ask where is mine? Well that begs a story.

I was at a country & western bar about ten years ago when a comely lass happened by and pinched me on the ass! "Cute butt" she said, smiling as she passed. I was struck dumb for I'd never been told that before. I consider myself average-looking, but(t) it occurs to me now that my backside might be my best side. And I refuse to post that. This blog has standards you know.

  posted by TS @ 16:09  
 

 
Fun With Scanners


  

This scanner is addicting. Here is the frontispiece to the 1958 edition of the forthrightly titled "I Love Books" (click to enlarge) 

  posted by TS @ 20:25  
July 25, 2005 

 
Thank You St. Joseph!

...And to all who said a prayer for my stepson, who has decided against joining the Navy and instead got another job much more suited to his personality.

  posted by TS @ 20:02  
 

 
What Kind of World?   - new fiction

Back in the days of winos & roses I was following the Alaskan Pipeline for the same reason people climb mountains: because it was there. And I happened across more than my fair share of colorful characters including one chinless man going to Ketchikan who seemed a cynical soul. Spying the rosary in my hand he said, "Ah priests! If they had a real job they wouldn't be so nice. Put them in a business suit and they wouldn't be so peaceful!"

I wasn't a priest and he seemed a long way from the business world but I assumed from the scars he'd been there and from it he was running. 

I told him about a pain from my past. "I once had a crush a girl who liked another fellow, a guy who was drunk all the time. Real light-hearted. He'd give you the shirt off his back too. But he had a buzz 24-7, the kind of light buzz Larry Hagman had during the '70s and '80s. He was such a friendly guy you didn't know if it was him or the alcohol. And I remember wanting to tell her, 'hey I'd be fun too if I was half-drunk all the time!' But I was wrong." 

"Hell right you were wrong. I've been drinking heavy for three years now and it ain't done my attitude any good."

"Not just that. It's this thinking that everything can be explained by chemicals or the environment. Deep down we want something in reserve. We want to know that we can protect ourselves like you think priests do, or that I can fix myself a drink in case of anxiety. But the only true reserve is the one you can't see and maybe not even feel."

"Can't feel? A reserve you can't feel? What the hell good is that?"

"More trust really. Trust in God. I'm still working it out, though it's probably a sign of desire for control that I'm even thinking about it, as if I'm trying to build up a reserve in advance for my own damn sake."

He fiddled with his shirt. 

"I had a friend who always said it's a 'doggy-dog' world instead of 'dog eat dog' world. I mean I actually saw him write it out that way so it's not like I was just hearing him wrong. Which do you think it is?"

  posted by TS @ 19:41  
 

 
Jumping the Shark

Come on, you know you want to see pictures of my great-grandparents don't you? Don't you? Surely it beats putting a picture of my cat on the blog, right?

Here is one pair. And another. And another. 

My mom is sending a picture of the two missing great-grandparents and I'll have pictures of all eight, which I'm naturally very pleased about.

  posted by TS @ 13:14  
 

 
The "Surprise" That Was Not Surprising

David Brooks thought the suspenseful thing in the Roberts nomination would be how Sen. Clinton would vote - but come on, was there really any doubt? She wants to be President and it's metaphysically impossible for her to offend her base (and thus be denied the nomination) because the base knows that she's a true believer.

In fact, the more obvious Hillary becomes in moving to the center the more obvious it becomes to her base that it's all a ruse. Liberal primary voters weren't born yesterday - they know it's "wink, wink - I've got to do these silly things so I can win the general election. You know how crazy those Ohio voters are."

In fairness to Sen. Clinton, having been so close to the presidency she is far more sympathetic to rights the president exercises than most congressmen. She understands the President should be able to nominate his or her preferred judges. And pardon criminals in return for funding presidential libraries. (Ok, so how fair did you think I was going to be?)

  posted by TS @ 09:40  
 

 
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. in First Things...

...has interesting things to say about C.S. Lewis:
In Surprised by Joy [C.S.] Lewis mentions that in the first years after his conversion he started attending Sunday services at his parish church, but adds: “The idea of churchmanship was to me wholly unattractive....I was deeply antiecclesiastical....I had as little relish to be in the Church as in the zoo. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome ‘get-together’ affair....To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk about spiritual matters....Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least. I have, too, a sort of spiritual gaucherie which makes me unapt to participate in any rite.”

These words, I believe, point to an individualistic and academic quality that affected Lewis’ religion almost to the end of his life. His “mere Christianity” is a set of beliefs and a moral code, but scarcely a society. In joining the Church he made a genuine and honest profession of faith—but he did not experience it as entry into a true community of faith. He found it possible to write extensively about Christianity while saying almost nothing about the People of God, the structures of authority, and the sacraments.
_

Apologetics, in Lewis’ view, provides a road map, but the map is no substitute for the journey. The relation between faith and reason becomes radically different once a person has made the act of faith. The believer enters into a personal relationship with God that involves far more than assent to propositions. He places total trust in God to such a point that he would continue to believe even if he ceased to see the reasons. Those who have experienced this interpersonal relationship know enough about God to trust Him even when He seems absent. On this ground Lewis defends what he calls “obstinacy in belief.”

Lewis proposes a very interesting definition. “Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” Arguments do not secure us against the fluctuations of our moods. 

  posted by TS @ 23:54  
July 24, 2005 

 
Another Reason to Love Amazon.com

Manishevitz do I like this "search inside" feature they have on so many books. It's perfect for bloggodocia too because although you can't cut & paste from the actual page it brings up, you can from the index listing the pages where your search item appears since it gives you the context around the search item in plain text. 

So I found the following quote from Catholic author Ron Hansen in his book "A Stay Against Confusion : Essays on Faith and Fiction" 
"Babette's Feast" merges incongruities, reconciles the irreconcilable. With Soren Kierkegaard, Karen Blixen argues against the either/or proposition that there is only one correct way to live one's life, that we are faced with a series of critical choices and if we choose wrongly we are lost. In her story the hedonistic general finds in the miracle of Babette's feast both ecstatic pleasure and a joyful, magnanimous God whom he otherwise could not imagined.
One thing that interests me about Isak Dinesen is how her writing, especially in Out of Africa, is so damn lyrical. It's evocative and beautiful, like Updike's only without the sex. And while she tells good stories one could enjoy them strictly for the words & phrasings. 

I think the rationalist likes stories, the romantic likes the poetry or melody. Flannery O'Connor, whose fiction I've never liked that much (though I love her letters, The Habit of Being), seems not all that lyrical but straight-ahead-always-going-forward-no-wasted-motion. The story is what is important for the holy (I don't mean that facetiously) O'Connor. Is the lushness of Updike or a Dinesen a form of debauchery? Is "good romantic" an oxymoron?

  posted by TS @ 23:46  
 

 
Excerpts from Judith Thurman's Biography of Isak Dinesen


But as much as Tanne [Karen Blixon, aka Isak Dinesen] loved her brother and missed him when he was gone, his vagueness and solemnity got on her nerves. They often quarreled...and Tanne thought that Darwin for one, ought to have been burned at the stake for his "depressing" view of life. He called her a reactionary, and she countered that he was a Bolshevik. They disagreed about sexual morality - his point of view was wholesome and romantic; hers enlightened, in the eighteenth century sense of the word - and about birth control, which Tanne thought was radically practical but not esthetic. Thomas told her that considering her general outlook she ought to become a Catholic, and she responded that without subscribing to any dogma she was a sort of Catholic..."I think so often about those words in the Bible: 'I will not let thee go before thou blessest me.' I think there is such deep meaning, something so glorious in them. I almost take it to be my 'motto' in this life."
_

If the feudal world of "Out of Africa" works so well, is so harmonious and beautiful, it is precisely because of its fixity. Love of fate is its central principle or, as Dinesen puts it, "pride..in the idea God had, when he made us." Its inhabitants take their places in the hierarchy according to the degree of pride they manifest, with the Africans - mystically forbearing and amused - at the top. The European aristocrats - the great atavisms like Denys, Berkeley and the narrator - defer to them, but just slightly and in the same spirit a gentleman feels himself to be morally inferior to a lady. Their fatalism is assertive; it is expressed as honor, and through it they have the privilege to understand tragedy. "If a man has a steadfast idea of honor," Dinesen told Curtis Cate, "he is absolutely safe as to what can happen to him."
Also found this link on Dinesen's "Babette's Feast", which includes this snippet: 
Like great moral deeds, artistic creation absorbs our entire energies. Preparing a great feast or singing an aria by Mozart removes us from the range of the ordinary and makes reentry, in the words of Walker Percy, an urgent human problem. Percy renames "reentry" what Kierkegaard calls the second movement, the return to the finite. After the great discharge of the all-consuming deed, how do we resume the ordinary tasks of life without scorn for the smallness at hand? In Lost in the Cosmos, Percy seems to assume that faith’s trek back to the finite is no longer much of an option. His account of the modern alternatives to faith is bleak indeed.
And in a stroke of luck, you can now Amazon search inside Flannery O'Connor's "The Habit of Being". And I found these references to Dinesen. Unfortunately there's not much. In a letter in 1957: "All I have read of Isak Dinesen are the twelve Gothic Tales and some of them I like right much-the one where the old woman and the money change places - but I can't take much of her at one time." Later in 1964: "I'm still reading 'Out of Africa' by Isak Dinesen too."

  posted by TS @ 23:09  
 

 
Excerpt from Isak Dinesen's "Out of Africa":


People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

  posted by TS @ 21:03  
 

 
From Our Diocesan Newspaper


VATICAN CITY --Eucharistic adoration may seem like a waste of time to beginners, but experience demonstrates that it yields great spiritual gifts, said the preacher of the papal household.

"To engagine in eucharistic contemplation means, in concrete terms, establishing a heart-to-heart contact with Jesus, who is truly present in the host," Caupchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said.

Just as standing in the sun for an extended period changes the lines of the face, eucharistic adoration works its changes, too, he said.

"To stand before the Blessed Sacrament for a long time and with faith, not necessarily with a lot of passion, we assimilate the thoughts and sentiments of Christ, in an intuitive way," he said.

  posted by TS @ 12:50  
 

 
The Gospel for the Competitive

At our Byzantine parish the gospel today was from Matthew where Jesus says that he has come not to abolish the Law but to fulfil it, and thus anyone who encourages the smallest sin will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. This reminded me of where elsewhere Jesus says that if you want to be greatest in Heaven you must serve the least.

It's interesting to me that Christ so desires that we imitate him that he offers motivations that sound almost base. In order to aggrandize ourselves - to be great in Heaven - he suggests we perform acts of charity and not lead others to sin. Shouldn't we want to do good out of love for Him and not out of love for ourselves and our position in Heaven? It as if Jesus is not afraid of intermediate stages in the spiritual life. One could say that he shrewdly understands human nature and that in condescending to become human he also condescended to appeal to our natural desire for hierarchy and competition. The desire to avoid Hell or shorten Purgatory are also motivations which seemingly fall short of perfection but have been/are powerful motivators in their effect.

Christ's desire that we exercise faith is also something that must be purely for our benefit. Faith offers God the trust and glory he deserves but in no way requires. Seeing how there is nothing in it for Him, it must be for us that we suffer here below in what Fr. Groeschel once said was proof of the doctrine of Purgatory (he said something along the lines of: "for those who don't believe in Purgatory, this earth isn't Club Med.").

  posted by TS @ 12:39  
 

 
The Sower Who Read   ...a cautionary tale

He was a farmer who tilled soil by day but at night tilled a different sort of soil, a soil rich with the scent of paper and ink and dense with the thoughts of the long dead. Every night he would retire to the lamplit bookroom, the century old lighting an affectation that had caused three fires and no fatalities (unless one counted books, and he certainly did).

The room was quite ordinary. Twelve by seventeen, a bit narrow feeling, and after wiping the dust away he wallpapered it with dead presidents both literally and figuratively. He hung portraits of Washington & Monroe & purchased four of what would be many bookcases. He carefully applied two coats of rosewood finish to the cases, proudly noting each swirl against the grain as if he were Michelangelo admiring his Giuliano de' Medici. 

The room narrowed, exponentially it seemed, as he fed it new books. The gyre was not widening yet the center could not hold; everywhere he looked there were books, books, more books! They enveloped him as if in a womb or cocoon and it was as if they had come to life and had begun spinning a web slowly around him, ‘round and ‘round, and if his limbs were no longer free to move about, what was that to him? "Come, my pretties, come!" he said. And they gathered in waves, torrents now, and his books had books until the dead presidents were obscured and he could no longer leave the room, could no longer move, and so the farm began to waste but the books gleamed, gleamed in supernova fashion, gleamed with an exponential shine. And one fine April morning it happened: his books had tilled him.

  posted by TS @ 19:14  
July 23, 2005 

 
Balthasar & Prayer

Edward T. Oakes, in America (via Amy Welborn):
Because I have spent much of my life trying to convey Balthasar’s massive achievement through translations, essays and monographs, I am often asked what first drew me to his theology. Actually, it was rather accidental. I had entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1966 and came across a book by him titled simply Prayer. The first paragraph showed me that here was a writer who got down to business right away. The opening lines struck me as so relevant to my own experiences in prayer (or rather lack of them) that their author captivated me from the start. Here is how the passage begins:
Prayer is something more than an exterior act performed out of a sense of duty, an act in which we tell God various things he already knows; a kind of daily attendance in the presence of the Sovereign who awaits, morning and evening, the submission of his subjects. Even though Christians find, to their pain and sorrow, that their prayer never rises above this level, they know well enough that it should be something more. Somewhere, here, there, is a hidden treasure, if only I could find it and dig it up—a seed that has the power to grow into a mighty tree bearing abundant flowers and fruits, if only I had the will to plant and cultivate it.

Ah yes, I said, that’s me! Rote prayer I knew well enough from my Catholic upbringing, but when I entered the novitiate I thought there should be something more. Yet here I was, trying to pray one hour in the morning and a half-hour in the afternoon, but I was apparently still the same religious automaton I had always been. Balthasar seemed to know just what I was feeling: Christians, he said, often feel like a foreigner forced to speak in a language whose rules they have never learned, or a stuttering child who wants to say something but cannot.

Still, how was Balthasar going to solve the problem he had so accurately diagnosed? Imagine my surprise, then, when I found the problem resolved not just over the course of the whole book but in the very next paragraph! The point of prayer, Balthasar said, is not to learn some new way of speaking, a task as arduous as memorizing French irregular verbs. No, prayer is first an act in which we learn, in his words, that “our halting utterance to God is but an answer to God’s speech to us.”

This might sound all well and good, but how is one to pray in a language God has spoken, when one’s very aridity in prayer makes God seem so silent? Again, the answer was not slow in coming: “Just consider a moment: is not the Our Father, by which we address him each day, his own word? Was it not given to us by the Son of God, himself God and the Word of God? Could any man by himself have discovered such language? Did not the Hail Mary come from the mouth of the angel, spoken, then, in the speech of heaven; and what Elizabeth, ‘filled with the Spirit,’ added, was that not a response to the first meeting with the incarnate God?”

Among other things, this passage explained to me why the Rosary is so popular. For it is almost entirely composed of these God-given prayers to help us in our need. Why worry about aridity or “experience” when we can resort to the Rosary when contemplative prayer seems to fail? Of course, Balthasar did bluntly assert in the first paragraph that prayer is something more than stereotyped formulas, and the Rosary is often considered to fall into just that formulaic rut. But as the book progressed, Balthasar explained that by interiorizing the Our Father and Hail Mary, one gradually learns to make use of the key privilege of prayer, what the New Testament calls parresia.

  posted by TS @ 11:02  
 

 
FFL

There's been some discussion/recussion concerning the group "Feminists for Life", sometimes with a whiff that it is somehow less orthodox than your typical right to life group. Judge Roberts' wife served in an official capacity for FFL and David Brooks of the NY Times tries to use that to suggest Roberts is more moderate for it: "he's not a holy warrior, and his wife is active in the culturally heterdox Feminists for Life". 

I support FFL but I hope it doesn't make me less a holy warrior (a tag I'm unworthy of but to which I aspire). I see FFL as the more loving way of framing the argument. Being pro-life is truly win/win - both mother and baby win if an abortion is avoided - and FFL emphasizes that point instead of buying into the false premise of pitting mother against baby. I see FFL not as a repudiation of groups like the American Life League but the culmination or the fruition, or at the least complementary. Of course, Sister Christer supports FFL so I might be wrong. :-)

  posted by TS @ 23:01  
July 22, 2005 

 
Writing

I was thinking about something I wrote not too long ago, a story about a woman who celebrates her birthday daily (a metaphor for what Christians must do – celebrate their baptisms daily) when it occurred to me that one of the more explicable reasons to write poetry or short stories is to invent something that someone hasn’t invented before. That’s not to say that what we write will be unique, since there is nothing new under the sun, but it will seem unique to us in the way a tribe in New Guinea might re-invent something we take for granted. Maybe it would take a mountain of reading to find that particular paragraph or story for which we hunger. What we say may leave 99.99% of humanity cold but if it warms our hearts it somehow seems an invention were inventing. Perhaps it's as simple as the creative juxtaposition of two words... Unfortunately, writers as a group are an extremely unimpressive lot. The Venn diagram of saints and writers wouldn't have much overlap. The inventions of the most inventive writers - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Greene, Joyce - aren't worth a bucket of warm spit if it didn't bring them closer to Christ.

  posted by TS @ 22:33  
 

 
H & H


Paysage Irlandais - oil; Guy Chevallier

Well yesterday was the annual 25-mile bike ride through the hills and vales of southwestern Ohio, traveling along bike paths to towns so far from the madding interstates they approach invisibility (without ever quite reaching it). 

Did I bury the lead? Have I not yet mentioned it was hot outside? They say it's not the heat, it's the humidity, but is this really either/or? Can I get an "and"? It felt like the sun was superglued to my hat, so inescapable was she. And the humidity! Oy vey! The combination was Dante-ian.

But we were glad to have the sun because Ohio has been under the remnants of Hurricane Dennis for lo these many days. Worse than having rain or clouds is not being able to complain about it, but I have Florida readers and they would rightly find such complaints scandalous. It's almost as obscene as an American complaining to a Russian about a lack of economic opportunity. So into a each life a little rain must fall but spare me the remnants of 'canes. 

One of the great delights of the annual bike ride is to find these small little towns. I would rather see a small Ohio town for the first time than most large cities, for large cities come with crowds and noise and sensation overload. The trail led to a new, good-sized library and we wondered if it was a mirage. The tiny town of Cedarville (reminiscent of Hooterville) has a nice new library? Population 3,828? Looked to be about ten books per resident. 

Cedarville, like all small towns, has a main street called "Main Street" and, like all small towns, can be found almost immediately. And we stopped at various places along it, like the historic Opera house, built in 1886. The Opera house is registered as a national historic landmark (some verbiage like that, you can't expect me to read those signs), and so I was stunned when I found the door unlocked. Got to love small towns where even their treasures are unfettered. We walked in and wandered up the staircase to...to...a room the size of the modern McMansion's bedroom! Okay I exaggerate. Still, they shouldn't call this the Cedarville Opera House but rather the Cedarville Opera Family Room. And I thought how odd it would be to go to a play or movie here and know most of the people there. I go to a play or movie in Columbus and will, of course, know no one there. Of course, it doesn't reflect well on me that I usually consider that a good thing. Small towns are certainly a different world. 

We continued up (down?) Main Street to the top of the hill, where all churches ought to be, and where stood a gigantic Baptist church, a Methodist church and a very old Presbyterian church. (Hearing Cedarville was dry, we safely assumed there were no Catholic churches in the area. Ha.)

The Baptist church promised more on the outside than delivered in the inside. The church proper was an auditorium. But they do do air conditioning well. I moved to the more interesting Presbyterian church, built in the 1800s, with the first pastor installed in 1829. This church looked like a church on the inside, with vaulting ceiling and lots of dark wood. But oddly, the "altar" was filled with life-size (and larger) Disney character cut-outs from The Lion King. There was something oddly humorous about the disjoint between the old and the new, sacred and secular. Despite my self-pledge to avoid metaphors ('I am Bill W. and I am a metaphorholic') one could see it as a symbol of where some churches have gone wrong - as a desperate "please love us! We're cute & cuddly!".

I walked back to the entrance where there was a mini-museum. Glass cases held beautiful old books with quiet, restful bindings. There was an aging bible and an old notebook with parishioner contributions. And there was a framed picture of a 19th century national woman's guild thanking this church's women for contributing the princely sum of twenty dollars. Similarly parsimonious will today's thousand dollar contribution eventually look. The large certificate of gratitude contained the photos of about a dozen women and I was struck by how uniformly homely Victorian women look. At first I think surely it's just their hair style and clothes but it seemed they just don't look that good facially either. And yet I'm sure they were a fine-looking bunch to the men of their time. Just another of life's little mysteries. 

We stopped at the "Beans 'n Creams" coffee shop for a beer lemonade and a sandwich. I got a chocolate shake too. It was surreally good. Just other-worldly.

Then it was back on the bike trail, that long black roadway breasted by beeches and birches, thistles and Queen Anne's lace. Every once in a while we'd view paradisiacal homes nestled on hillocks with long porches aching for rocking chairs. *sigh*. I console myself that living there can't be nearly as good as imagining living there.

Since I'm no Lance Armstrong, biking twenty-five miles under an azure sky makes me sleepy. On the drive home I find myself falling asleep. But thankfully I discover anew that beginning to drive off the road is a powerful stimulative. After that there are no problems. 

Oddly, energy usage begets energy usage, so once at home I take the dog a walk and tidy up the house a bit. Later that evening, I slept the sleep of the dead. 



Cedarville Opera House; object is smaller than it appears

  posted by TS @ 08:46  
 

 
Poetry Friday


Oh To Be Shootin' The Breeze With Barney Fife

The weight of issues
the sturm & drang
the manipulations and gesticulations
i'll move you, you'll move me ---

I hope we can get to the small talk.


High Naturale

'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard'
is the language of the psychedelic
but this drug won't corrupt
its ecstasy is Physician-directed. 


pre-Vatican I*

How perfect, 
I think,
that the Church could act infallibly
without yet knowing it
like an infant with powers
she could not yet conceive,
like the Baptized still struggling
in the land of bereaved, 
showing in growth
their dependence on Him.

* - Inspired by Pontifications' Swimming the Tiber, or How I Came To Love Infallibility

  posted by TS @ 06:45  
 

 
Potter...Rove....Rove...Potter

Never has so much been made about so little concerning these two characters. Given current evidence, they both seem harmless to me.

  posted by TS @ 10:29  
July 21, 2005 

 
Gratitude is Elusive

Tom has been studying the Great Flood and it occurred to me that it seems as if God is constantly trying to cultivate gratefulness in human beings. 

To greater appreciate the covenant given to Noah (i.e. the blessing of fruitfulness despite man's sin) there had to be a cursing of unfruitfulness due to man's sin (the Flood).

To better appreciate the NT there is the OT. 

To appreciate Grace, there is Law.

To better appreciate Heaven, we have earth.

While earth, the Law, the Old Testament (I won't say the Flood) are good things, we don't seem to be able to appreciate gifts except through their denial, or at least through a kind of "relational assignation". 

My father came home from work and whenever our mother would talk about how stressful his job was he would remind her and us of the poverty in China. I came to find that that was not just a platitude with him. He kept that in mind. He reminded himself that his job was not stressful comparatively speaking. (I'm not sure who the Chinamen coming home from a slave labor camp could compare his situation to.)

  posted by TS @ 10:20  
 

 
Understanding Styles

Interesting link via Amy's blog on the difference between "winter" and "summer" Christians.

  posted by TS @ 08:56  
 

 
Watching the Boob Tube

On Imus this morning non-Catholic NY Times editorialist David Brooks made an interesting observation:
"You look at the chief Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, you've got Biden, you've got Leahy, you've got Kennedy, you've got Durbin - all Catholics - and you look at the attention-grabbers on the court - Scalia, Thomas are Catholics, Roberts is a Catholic, and so sometimes I think that this whole thing is an argument between different types of Catholics. So I think it'll be interesting little dispute about what sort of Catholic Church we should have."
Meanwhile over on O'Reilly, Bill says that the reason pro-aborts are so rabidly pro-abort because "deep down they know the destruction of a fetus is problematic", so they need "affirmation".

  posted by TS @ 20:06  
July 20, 2005 

 
Stuck in the '90s

Fox News analyst William Crystal called Bush's pick "bold" because Roberts wasn't a woman or Hispanic. And I thought: gosh how touchingly anachronistic.

Identity politics is so '90s. Nobody much cares about race or gender anymore. White conservatives love Justice Thomas and black liberals hate him. If Condi Rice was a liberal Democrat, Hillary Clinton would look like a red-headed stepchild by comparison, so fawning would be the mainstream press. 

Wars tend to concentrate the mind. No one cared that Lincoln was homely or that FDR was disabled. And we're involved in not only the hot war in Iraq but the culture war. And in a foxhole you don't care what the race, gender or ethnicity of your fellow soldier is, but only whether they can do the job.

~
Update: Today's chuckle is provided by Jeff Miller: 
Thank you President Bush for selecting Judge Roberts, someone who actually believes in the Constitution as it was written. I know for myself if I ever saw a living Constitution I would get out my Holy Water and dowse it generously.
Now them's good comedy. First (to use an odious phrase) he's thinking outside the box. I've heard the phrase "living Constitution" so long that it no longer registers, I could on longer see the words-as-image the way Jeff did. I also like the word 'generously' at the end. "I would get out my Holy Water and dowse it" would work but "generously" gives the joke its proper inflection of exaggeration. The joke is also effective by its placement. He begins with "More evidence that George W. Bush is different than his father..." and we think that this will be serious post, but then the joke appears and lands all the more humorously for its unexpectedness.

  posted by TS @ 08:41  
 

 
Valley of Tears

"I weep for you, as Jazer weeps, O vines of Sibmah." - Jer 48:32
I wonder why 
so many Marian statues
are said to be weeping.

I want to say:
‘cheer up Mary,
you’re in Heaven!'

It's not like the commercials
where the sportsman smiles, 
says 'I'm going to Disney World!'

She cries the tears
her son had asked
‘Do not weep for me, 
weep for your children’

We are her children.


* 

Religious sentiment, they say,
is the partner of pornography--
"sensation for sensation’s sake"
to quote the late Flannery O'.

But oh it's not so with Mary
where sentiment isn't sentimental
emotions aren't chimeras
and love is real.

  posted by TS @ 07:27  
 

 
                  

I am giving up blogging pretty much. Still, I think people ought to read my stuff even if I don't write it. 

- Bill Luse of Apologia; my sentiments exactly

I frequently recommend The Habit of Being as rather essential spiritual reading. I gave a copy to my mother a couple of years before she died, and a few months before she passed away, she told me how tremendously helpful and meaningful the book had been. 

- Amy Welborn

I'd binked and bonked around the Summa [Theologica] for years, and then by reading Fr. Farrell's Companion [to the Summa] realized . . . that God actually wants me to be happy. Now why, exactly, God allows people like me, who go about living as though He doesn't want them to be happy, to exist is (somewhat) another subject. The point is that if you're one of us, if you admire the Summa -- either in an abstract "will-have-to-go-there-someday" manner as one might admire the Taj Mahal or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, or in a confused "gee-I-know-the-Summa-but-don't-think-God-wants-me-to-be-happy" way -- you ought to read Fr. Farrell's Commentary. You can find it online here. Or, if you want an even shorter version, pick up My Way of Life, which is a kind of prose-poem Fr. Farrell helped write about the Thomist view of the universe. 

- Secret Agent Man

Look at nudies on the memorial of St. Maria Goretti? Never! Not that I look at nudies on any of the other 364 days of the year, of course. (To this day, I don't know what those images of Graham Faulkner look like.) This story just happens to be a great introduction to the point I want to make about Sta. Maria Goretti: she shames me into choosing the good.

-Enbrethiel of Sancta Sanctis

The Kolbe medal that I'd taken to wearing around my neck suddenly made me feel a little embarrassed. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it struck me that, if I were to meet Kolbe, he'd find it sadly amusing that I was wearing his image rather than Mary's. Kolbe pointed to Mary—it seemed awkward that I should merely point to him....Last Sunday, I made the trip up to the Church of Notre Dame at Columbia University, a beautiful church with a lovely service. Afterwards, over refreshments, I noticed a parishioner was wearing the Miraculous Medal, and I asked her where I could get one. A young man who was standing nearby with his wife immediately proffered me a Miraculous Medal he'd apparently been carrying for just such an opportunity. It took me a moment to process that he was actually giving me the medal. Then I thanked him and took it happily. It was one of those magical moments of serendipity. 

- Dawn Eden of "The Dawn Patrol"

Dawn Eden earlier this week posted a story about NARAL picketing outside of a crisis-pregnancy center with signs such as "FAKE CLINIC."...Their carrying signs that said "FAKE CLINIC" is especially ironic. Aborturaries don't offer medical services that perform healing. They don't heal what is broken, rather they kill both the life of the child and as a consequence do serious damage to the psychological health of the mother and can cause other possible medical side effect. A clinic where you are worse off when you came out then when you went in is by definition a "FAKE CLINIC." 

- Jeff of Curt Jester 

I have always hated domestic work, especially cooking and cleaning the kitchen. The kitchen is where I most felt like an unappreciated martyr. I started by bringing it to the confessional, and that helped some. But the greatest graces came when I offered up cooking more often and focussing on the kitchen for my lenten offerings. I began by placing a Crucifix on the window above the sink, so that whenever I felt like a martyr, I would remember what Jesus did for me. My husband tells me my kitchen is turning into a church, but he doesn't complain about the meals and cleanliness there now. As for me, I really enjoy cooking and cleaning for my family now--I offer a lot of it up for them and feel joyfully buoyant doing it! As for the idea of acting our way into feelings, I think that this is why we talk about love being an act of the will. Too many people divorce when the feeling of love first deserts us. They never make it to the stage where you have to think about why you first loved your spouse, and then take the initiative to treat him with the same joyful, loving spirit you did in the beginning, even if the feeling isn't yet there. Nagging and complaining will never bring the love back, but loving him usually will. The fact that the love is greater and stronger than ever is something too few couples realize anymore. 

- commenter on Sr. Lorraine's site

Welcome to the reader who reached this site searching for "Catholic Church prostitute 15 century florence monday". Sorry, but I've only dealt with that topic as it pertains to Tuesdays, not Mondays. 

- Greg the Obscure

This Harry Potter jazz makes me conclude that it's a race between the libs and the cons as to who wants the Index of Forbidden Books back in action.The libs can have something either to ignore or to insult. The cons can have extra ammo to act like know-it-all goon squad cops (whose help was never asked). God bless the "Caelum et Terra" crew. That was a welcome journal. It was like a good chill pill after a hard swallow of something in either "Crisis" or "The National Catholic Reporter". 

- Fr. Shawn O'Neal on Amy's blog

I still sometimes think of poverty in [a] positivist way: I assume that it will breed crime and often blame it for many of society's other problems. Such a view implies that money can solve everything--which anyone can tell you it has no power to do...What I'm saying is that I wouldn't fault anyone who let desperate economic realities sway their moral choices. This is precisely why I'm in such awe of those who don't let desperate economic realities sway their moral choices.Sta. Maria Goretti puts me to shame not just because she said no to a particular grave sin, but because it is obvious that she had a habit of saying no to sin on principle. 

- Enbrethiel of Sancta Sanctis

  posted by TS @ 22:16  
July 19, 2005 

 
Bait 'n Switch

I jumped the gun on that last post. As a strategy to distract extremists it was pretty effective. (I wish the Prez & his staff were as good at planning for the aftermath of war as they are at winning elections and announcing Supreme Court nominees.)

John Roberts appears to be no Scalia or Thomas, but the bench folks seem to think he's a good choice. His wife has served as executive vice president for Feminists for Life, which can't be a bad sign.

  posted by TS @ 21:00  
 

 
Judge Clement to Get the Nod?

Red State.org seems to think so. 

The fact that we don't know much about her speaks volumes. It represents a remarkable capitulation on the part of the President if she's nominated because it illustrates a spectacular double-standard.

Democrat presidents can nominate judges with paper trails who support abortion and who are not particularly attractive (see Ruth Bader Ginsberg). Republican Presidents have to slink around and find someone without a paper trail who is photogenic and by one report called Roe v. Wade settled law.

Certainly Bush would be hewing to the letter, if not the spirit, of what he promised - she's said to be a strict constructionist. But when you have a Republican Senate and a two-term Republican president, you just have to shake your head to see the President out skulking about in the bushes looking for a woman who won't offend Arlen Spector and Teddy Kennedy. It's really pathetic.

  posted by TS @ 11:42  
 

 
Need Some Good News? 

Go here!

  posted by TS @ 09:47  
 

 
On The Glories of Nature & Why Southerners Make Good Writers

Letter from Reid Buckley to his brother William F. Buckley, as printed in National Review:


Walking a country lane and simply looking about one can be among the most rewarding experiences available to us in this vale of tears. Have you noticed the lyre-shaped sparkleberry tree at the head of the Pasillo, the tall, handsome hickory by the Plazuela de la Lealtad that looks as though it was at one time circled in chains, the trailing arbutus on the path entering the Peninsula, the birdsfoot violets and wild iris across the Big Pond? I can always tell a farmer when I receive his visit. His eyes take in everything, and he will say, "I notice you’ve put out milo where you had browntop millet last year. Any reason?"

I remember Icky Guy remarking to me how it is that southerners, who may not visit a book other than the Bible twice in their lives, yet turn out a disproportionate number of our country’s finest novelists, or used to. He explained the phenomenon by saying that southerners prefer to live their lives directly and intensely, as a personal experience, rather than derivatively — wasting their time buried in a book. But when they are called on, or feel the impulse, to write, they pour into their writing all that passionate and closely observed devotion to the land. 

...The profound pleasure of nature is cost-free but jealous. It will not brook competition; requires total concentration. The trick is this: Keep the ego from intruding. Let the glory and balm of nature flood into your soul, in silence. Harken to nature. Sieve it through your eyes, suck it in through your nose and mouth (and pray that you do not suck in a deer fly at this season). Let your whole being float in what surrounds you, and shut up. Shut up! Do not talk, even if it kills you to keep silence. Do not even think, if you can avoid that. Nothing you may think or say is of the least importance to the cosmos. You will not be here for long; nature is here forever.

  posted by TS @ 09:28  
 

 
Funny

A Paul Harvey joke:

There are three types of people. Those who can count and those who can't.

  posted by TS @ 09:14  
 

 
Recognizing Muslims Are Different

Jonah Goldberg, as usual, gets it:
The scandal wasn’t that there was a "backlash" against the Muslim community. It is that there wasn’t more of a backlash within the Muslim community. We now know that the attackers were British born and raised Muslims. Yet there’s precious little evidence that the Muslim community is eager to turn on the enemy within with any admirable enthusiasm.

This is a recipe for unmitigated disaster. Obviously, it makes terrorism more likely. And it also makes precisely the sort of climate the press and moderate Muslims fear most. If normal Muslims can’t be counted on to turn on terrorists in their midst, how can a nation avoid taking measures that will seem unfair to normal Muslims? Already nine out of ten Brits support sweeping new powers for the police. If jihadis can hide among the larger Muslim population, it’s obvious that the larger Muslim population will come under greater scrutiny. The logic of the cancer cell kicks in, and even more young Muslims feel “oppressed” and the number of jihadis will grow.
Our mutual dependence is shown by the fact that we must wait for Muslims to get their act together in order for there to be fewer terrorist acts. And the mainstream media isn't doing us any favors -- rather than shaming Muslims they encourage the further production of imaginary chips on their shoulders. I suppose even if the Western media woke up and started calling a spade a spade (i.e. if the BBC & NY Times headquarters were hit) the Middle East would cling even tighter to Al Jazeera. The plain fact is that Western culture is skeptical of itself while Muslim culture is extremely self-confident. We do have a lot in common in that regard: we blame the West first and they blame the West first. Looks like we're in for a long wait.

Speaking of differences, came across an article on Christian-Muslim relations on the website of a humanitarian papal agency titled The Vocabulary of Dialogue. It's a good look at how we lose something in translation and how sometimes semantics can make a big difference:
One of the more interesting areas for the study of semantic fields is in words for color. Every language I know of has words for color. The healthy human eye sees the colors of the spectrum and names them. Nothing seems more natural or self-evident – the sky is blue and the grass is green. So there. What is interesting is that it is not so self-evident, especially at the “boundaries” of colors, where the semantic field of the word for a color in one language is broader or more constricted than the corresponding word in another language.

Two examples: When asked the color of dried, dead grass most English speakers will say that it is brown. Germans will say that it is gelb, yellow. When asked the color of a frost-covered field, most Germans will say that it is grau, grey, while most English speakers will say the field is white. It is clear that both the German and English speaker are looking at the same phenomenon. It is not that one sees one thing and the other sees something else. It is the case, however, that the semantic field of the English word yellow does not usually cover dead grass and the English word grey has a semantic field that does not cover the color of a frost covered field. The semantic fields of the German gelb and grau, however, do not cover this phenomenon, despite the fact that we often translate them as “yellow” and “grey” respectively.

This may seem like an interesting, but basically useless, piece of information, scarcely relevant, if at all, for the Catholic-Muslim Dialogue. However, I do not think that is the case at all. Roman Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity and a good part of Orthodox Christianity developed their vocabulary over centuries in Greek... 

Simply put, if at the beginning of the Catholic-Muslim dialogue a great deal of energy was spent– and rightly so – on "how you are like me," the mature dialogue must eventually spend a great deal of energy on understanding "how you are not like me."
UPDATE: More from Lofted Nest...and from Daniel Pipes: Is Allah God?

  posted by TS @ 07:42  
 

 
Memes Happen

Summer meme makes me feel fine,
blowin' through the jasmine in my mind...

Elena has tagged me with what looks to be the world's longest meme:

What I was doing 10 years ago: eating pizza?

5 years ago: probably watching that I Dream of Jeannie episode where Tony yells "Jeannie!!...Jeannie!!" multiple times

1 year ago: I'll take Blogging for $500 Alex

Yesterday: Mass, read McCullough's account and analysis of Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs (fascinating read), grilled out shish-ke-bobs (actually my stepson did the cooking), drank two beers, mediated a family quarrel, hiked four miles.

5 Snacks I enjoy:
Ding Dongs
King Dons
Life cereal
Oreo's with new chocolate center
grapes

5 songs I know all the words to:
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Billy, Don't Be a Hero
Star Spangled Banner
Take Our Bread
The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha

5 things I would do with $100 million dollars:
Unstrap our financially-strapped Byzantine Church 
Buy a kayak for Darby Creek wanderings
Donate to my Catholic high school
Ditto Elena, back to school for theology/history and/or literature
Acquire ten acres out in the country

5 locations which I would like to visit:
Jerusalem
Germany
Rome
Medjugorje
Mexico

5 bad habits I have:
too much internet
trouble on the greens & off the tee (chip well)
too much dependence on self
laziness
answering memes

5 things I like doing
reading
writing
listening to music
beer drinking
biking

5 things I would never wear:
a lampshade
Speedos
an earring
a man bro
Bill Clinton-length running shorts 

5 TV shows I like:
24
The Apprentice
The Munsters
BookTV's "In Depth"
Franciscan University Presents

5 biggest joys of the moment:
beauty of summer
the Mass
a plethora of great books to read
seeing my previously liberal stepson donating to the Cato Institute
the Sox are in town when I go to visit Boston o'er Labor day! Yea!

5 favorite toys:
Tivo
my 'puter
lawn tractor
my dvd player
cell phone

And these from Bill of Summa Minutiae (for once, living up to his blog name):

What are the last three things that made you sweat?
Reading in backyard sun on Sunday
Hike in woods Sunday
Cleaning house on Saturday

As far as tagging people, consider this an open invitation. I wouldn't want to be responsible for furthering a possible internet addiction. :-)

  posted by TS @ 18:24  
July 18, 2005 

 
Bumper Stickers

Jeff Culbreath is looking for a few good bumper stickers. Which reminds me of a SUV I saw recently with a Marine Corps sticker beside another that said, "Martyrs or Marines? Who do you think is going to get the virgins?"

  posted by TS @ 11:20  
 

 
It's Intended to be Win-Win

I often forget that we're to thank God both in good times and in bad. This is a "win/win" situation: when times are going well we thank God for it and when times are not going well suffering offers us an opportunity to become closer to Him & so we thank Him. A saint once wrote "what's it to you whether you come to Heaven by way of the fields or the desert?".

But our lives are not all desert nor all field. And the difficulty is quickly accepting the desert after enjoying the field. To use a trivial example, if I'm involved in doing something and my wife asks me to help her do some cleaning or some other task. To switch gears, as it were. Similarly a weekend that looks free and then suddenly I'm told there's a third straight gathering with the in-laws. To smile and thank God seems a foreign concept while I'm out playing in the field (both literally and figuratively).

Some try to avoid re-entry difficulties by attempting to make life all field or all desert. The former is much more common of course, but there are remnants of the latter such as the stripping of physical beauty from churches, or such as shown by the way some denominations forbid drinking, gambling and dancing.

  posted by TS @ 08:04  
 

 
A Shocker

The conversation had the same quality we'd been having for years but this time with a shocking twist for an ending. (Though perhaps she's just more honest than most?)

Her goal is temporal happiness and to avoid suffering, and so there's always a wrestling between her and God.

"Look at the way he treats his friends- the Jews, the Irish, His Son!"

I had no answer. This didn't seem to be an opportune time to mention Pascal's line that "every conversion is a sentence" or quote the writer Paul Claudel: "No one can foretell where the demands of God, which the Scriptures tell us are harsher than Hell, will stop. Small wonder that your flesh shudders where so many of the greatest saints have trembled before you."

I'd certainly tried St. Paul, who said that God never gives us more than we can bear. 

She asked me to pray for something concerning a mutual loved one.

"I'll pray that God's will be done."

"No! Don't pray for that!"

"What? You're kidding right."

"No, I never pray for that."

I should've asked her how she makes it through the Our Father. But I also realized anew the natural end of apologetics, that point at which only Love can take somebody. There's a gospel account of Our Lord saying that it's better to do something after saying you won't do it, than saying you will and not doing it. I hope and pray she's in the former category.

  posted by TS @ 07:45  
 

 
Negative Aspects of Blogging

Inspired by the news that Hilary of Fiat is leaving the blogosphere...

1) Dysutopian responses common

Being called a jackass in print, without the ameliorating gestures of tone and body language, often triggers negative emotions in the receiver. 

2) Inoculative effects of tiny doses of fame are, in fact, not inoculative.

It is been shown that the negative impacts of fame on the human psyche are not only not avoided by tiny doses of fame but instead these trigger only the desire for greater fame. Site statistics are to bloggers what the Coke bottle was to the Aborigines in The Gods Must Be Crazy.

3) Words as plumage 

Inappropriate mating rituals can occur. The male blogger engages in preening activities such as aggressive behavior in comment boxes in order to secure admiring glance of female readers. 

4) Taboo Breaking

Saying that which cannot be said can be hellaciously appealing. This most often takes the form of profligate usage of cuss words. 

5) Disproportionate Time Spent Polishing Posts of Utter Insignificance

Here the blogger revises and extends his remarks as if they're appearing in the Congressional Record. (Note: since most blogs have more readers than the Congressional Record, this is not necessarily irrational behavior.)

6) Rise of "blog coaches" a sure sign of the Apocalypse

Lavishly paid consultants known colloquially as "blog coaches" provide ideas for posts, analyze content for audience appeal, counsel on when to use "that" versus "which". (Ok, I made this one up.)

  posted by TS @ 07:36  
 

 
St. Thomas Aquinas on "Whether prayer should last a long time?"
Now the quantity of a thing should be commensurate with its end, for instance the quantity of the dose should be commensurate with health. And so it is becoming that prayer should last long enough to arouse the fervor of the interior desire: and when it exceeds this measure, so that it cannot be continued any longer without causing weariness, it should be discontinued. Wherefore Augustine says (ad Probam. Ep. cxxx): "It is said that the brethren in Egypt make frequent but very short prayers, rapid ejaculations, as it were, lest that vigilant and erect attention which is so necessary in prayer slacken and languish, through the strain being prolonged. By so doing they make it sufficiently clear not only that this attention must not be forced if we are unable to keep it up, but also that if we are able to continue, it should not be broken off too soon." And just as we must judge of this in private prayers by considering the attention of the person praying, so too, in public prayers we must judge of it by considering the devotion of the people. 

  posted by TS @ 14:56  
July 16, 2005 

 
Wow

Lefty Richard Cohen takes on lefties (talk about a man bites dog story): 
Whatever it is that explains how thugs on the left remain heroes long after their thuggery has been exposed has now attached itself in a way to Saddam Hussein. I don't think he is quite ready for T-shirts or coffee mugs, but when the war in Iraq is denounced, Hussein is often not mentioned at all. Michael Moore managed to leave him on the cutting room floor in his cartoon of a documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," and he gets similar (non)treatment in the upcoming documentary "Why We Fight." From these and other sources you would think that the nature of Hussein and his regime had nothing to do with the decision to go to war. But Hussein figured prominently, even paramountly, in why some of us originally supported the war and why some people still do. The man is a beast.

It's hard, in a mere column, to account for why parts of the left have such a selective concern for human rights -- in one place but not another. 
via Two Sleepy Mommies

  posted by TS @ 14:51  
 

 
Let's Play...

..."what's on my lampstand" - a new meme as tagged by Steven Riddle. First, a lamp -imagine that! I bet precious few lampstands are without one. Also a clock radio, Lit of the Hours, 3 remotes, "Lamentations & Exaggerations", a Pieta statue and "Letters & Diaries of John Henry Newman Vol. XXVII".

Update: I'm supposed to tag people. Bill of Apologia fame because he can make a boring subject interesting. MamaT. Smock Mama. And two others (decide amongst yourselves) are free to join in the fun.

  posted by TS @ 14:31  
 

 
Pipe Me A Tune

It's so odd how one day the Makem Brothers can sound lachrymose, gluttonously sweet, and Mr. Rogers simple. And the next I can’t get enough of them. I’ve played the cd twice and it strikes some primeval nerve. I can feel again the magic in the strumming of the bodhran - somebody call the Cheiftains!

I'm homesick for Ireland so play me nothing but songs of Eire. I miss the old sod and old poems and the hint of sea dust in the air. I miss the medieval maps with the crypto-familiar names; Connaught, Mayo, Donnegal, Slivo. I hunger for a bit of the west wind's spray against my face, the froth of salt sea against my neck, the rush of white sail flying over the rhythmic blue.
Cén t-ainm atá ort

Oh sean behean-bhoct!
lined with your ancient names
sing, you creasing Shannon,
you weather-beaten land
flood me with your Inis’s
hide me in your Croagh’s
your Ard Mor’s 
and your Eochaill’s,
find me in your Loch’s.

Flee back to thee,
Tongue, sound the ancient chord!
Tá mé i mo chónaí i 
Bíonn gach duine go lách
go dtéann bó ina gharraí
An dtuigeann tú?
Is dóigh liom
Buíochas le Dia!

  posted by TS @ 10:57  
 

 
His hair is like a mop
drawing swirls of blood
footholds for Heaven seekers
each smear a saving torrent
containing a thousand Floods.

His feet are bound and tied
split by the hard iron
of human stubbornness,
while from His ribs
issue the water & blood
of Adam’s new bride.

  posted by TS @ 10:55  
 

 
Sea Songs, Shanties, & Poetry

Excellent sea shanty resource: 

Cape Cod girls ain't got no combs
     Haul away, haul away
They brush their hair with codfish bones
     And we're bound away for Australia
Also came across this retrospective of sea bard George Mackay Brown, including poems of tribute here, here and here. 


Whereas, when it blows from the West — which is after all, the airt it loves best — it brings music and magic to us, seal songs and the breath of mermaids and the merry splurge and dance of whales. And more, it brings aromas of the magic isle in the west, that people have known was there for thousands of years. The Gaelic-speakers called it Tir-nan-Og (which means ‘the land of the young’). Once we’re there, believe me, Gypsy, we'll never be old and sick and weary — for pussies there’ll be a silver fish on a plate every day, and a nice stone – emerald or lapis lazuli — to sit on always in the sun, and no dogs and no bad-tempered householders who ‘shoo’ pussies off their doorsteps. There, in Tir-nan-Og, even the East wind is gentle and full of scents and sweet sounds. ---George Mackay Brown 
Excerpt from "A Cairn for George Mackay Brown" by A.G. Boobier
5,000 years ago
a stone
HURLED
from Vestafiold

§

it BROKE the upsurge
of the Atlantic breakers

held aloof the raw salt wind
at Skara Brae

dug into black earth
held limpets kelp
became sepulchre and home
to fishermen and farmers...

§

it FELL among brothers sisters
who danced in the round
with the Beltane sun
and the two waters
at Brodgar

  posted by TS @ 14:18  
July 15, 2005 

 
Pottergate 2005

Mark Felt: "Follow the Quidditch ball"

Media: "What did the Pope know, and when did he know it?"

JK Rowling as Dick Nixon: "You won't have Harry Potter to kick around anymore!"

  posted by TS @ 13:04  
 

 
My Talking Points    - prompted by a post on Amy's blog

My take has always been that if the Iraq War was unjust, then the Gulf War was unjust because the Iraq war was a continuation caused by ceasefire violations. If the Iraq War began two months instead of ten years after Hussein began violations fewer would've a problem with it. The time lag bothered most even though, ironically, that time (coupled with economic sanctions) was given to Hussein in order to help avoid war.

Ignoring the ceasefire agreement was certainly a viable option, at the risk of rendering future ceasefires meaningless and thus encouraging other rogue states. Not to mention encouraging Hussein himself. One has to measure that price against the dear price of engagement.

So, is it worse to be unpredictable (in the sense of sometimes enforcing or hewing to agreements and sometimes not) or to be predictable (i.e. having the world know where we stand and how we'll react)? A Ryne Duren or a Greg Maddox?

I should read more on how World War I started. Was it that the major powers were too predictable or not predictable enough? My impression is that key countries had 'set points' which if triggered automatically sent them to war. Was it that the set points were far too trivial for what was to become an unimaginably brutal war? Or was it that their triggers for war weren't communicated or taken seriously?

I see I've asked too many questions to call this my "talking points".

  posted by TS @ 10:44  
 

 
Das Hoot

    A new form of blogger comedy has been discovered over at the Corner. Basically you pick out Broadway shows and tweak the names and stories for comedic effect. 

~

Sound of Moo Sick - a fish-out-of-water comedy about a city slicker in the country dealing with an ill bovine (based on a story by Jeff Culbreath) 

Breast Side Story - Young mom sues city for failure to allow her to public breastfeed

My Fair Katie - musical in which William F. Buckley takes a bet that he can turn Katie Couric into a conservative and pass her off at the Heritage Foundation's annual ball

A Soros Line - millionaire George Soros tries singing and dancing rather than throwing money at those mischievous American voters

Hello Folly - tragic docudrama starring young actress marrying a famous actor/Scientologist 

Beat Me in St. Louis - comedy starring the Reds playing those unbeatable St. Louis Cardinals

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Sorghum - city uses eminent domain to take small farmer's land in order to build strip mall

Rant 'em at the Opera - counter-tribalist blogger sings rants against everything and everyone 

Glen Married Glen's Boss - woman leads forty-year old bachelor down the aisle - or he's fired!

The Lyin' King - the epic saga of filmmaker Michael Moore

Beauty and the Least - story of how in serving those who have the least Mother Teresa became the world's beauty

  posted by TS @ 07:38  
 

 
Summer Guide to Resisting Lust

It's summertime and that means a young, middle-aged, and an old man's thoughts turn to... the fact that women are wearing less clothes. Here are a few suggestions you may or may not find useful:

1) Re-direct your attention from the body to the face and hair. 

Sometimes you can't look away. (This is especially true when you're driving a car - for best results, look straight ahead.) But you can look at hair and face. Not only is that not felt on a glandular level (aesthetic only) but it also reminds you of her personhood and that she's not to be reduced to an object of pleasure.

2) Remember the words of the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want". Alternative readings: "I shall not lack" or "I shall not lack for any good thing". Feelings of desire and want can be discarded since how can we want if God promises we shall be satisfied? 

3) Praise God for his marvelous handiwork. Tell Him what an impressive job he did with her (sometimes this goes along the lines, 'perhaps too good'). This helps not only in helping us to step back and become outsiders rather than participants but also by invoking God we are given help.

4) Ask Mary to pray that we be given the grace to want to be chaste.

  posted by TS @ 07:11  
 

 
The Latin Mass

I received a book catalog with a quote (not my ellipsis) from Cardinal Ratzinger: "By incessantly inventing new Eucharistic prayers...we have sunk farther and farther into banality." And it occurred to me that there has been a rather large hole in my hit-and-miss education. I have little idea what a pre-Vatican II Mass consisted of. I've been to two Tridentine liturgies but in the distracting newness of it I didn't get a complete sense of what was actually being prayed.

If we are what we pray, then the Liturgy to some extent forms us. (Of course, you have to pray it to be formed by it and I've heard it said that few back in the '50s paid much attention to it and instead said their own prayers & private devotions.) But here the Church was formed for hundreds of years by a liturgy I was completely unfamiliar with! For history's sake alone I should have read the text of the Latin mass before. But fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I was able to here.

The Mass seemed more expressive of our mutual dependence; there are more mentions of and prayers to the saints (and our dependence on God was expressed visually by the priest facing the same direction as the people). There was more focus on sinfulness of course. But oddly, given how clerical the pre-Vatican II church was and how the priest is seen as an altus Christus, there was an equality in the confessions of priest and people. The priest alone expresses sorrow for his sins, before God and the laity, offers an act of contrition and the parishioners respond, "May almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins, and bring you to everlasting life.". The laity then identically express their contrition and the priest responds with the same prayer asking God's forgiveness. 

Update: I found this interesting post.

  posted by TS @ 12:38  
July 14, 2005 

 
Rich

Scott Hahn's latest arrived in the mail yesterday and it is rich. Flipping at random, I read a sidebar on the historicity of the Flood, a common enough question in a scientific-minded age. There are also copious quotations from Church Fathers and the Catechism, including a long quote from Augustine's "City of God" concerning David & King Saul and how David's tremendous respect and solicitude for the unsavory Saul was due to Saul's annointing (Saul as 'The Lord's Christ'), which is inspiring example of seeing God where others don't.

I wish we'd had resources like this when I was young. At our Catholic high school we suffered through the heretical "Christ Among Us" (one that Amy Welborn especially loathes). We were also heavy into John Powell S.J.'s stuff, which is better that "Christ Among Us" but not nearly as rich as Hahn's. Newly reverted and feeling the zeal, a few years back I wrote our high school and chastized them for their mediocre Religion program. I received a very defensive reply. And I have more sympathy for them now. It's hard to know what you don't know, and I think they just didn't know any better. They thought they were doing the right thing and giving us the proper tools to evangelize ourselves and the world.

  posted by TS @ 11:48  
 

 
Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song?

I was at a place of great financial temptation leafing through the impressive Spiritual Formation Bible, a Protestant version but with Catholic-friendly Dallas Willard among its editors. I read the introduction to "The Song of Songs" and was a bit disappointed with Dallas.

The editors wrote that this book celebrates the physical love between a man and a woman only, end of story. They said it shows how this shows that the Church was wrong to hate the body and hate sex and wrong to allegorize this book for a thousand or more years. Either/or, not and/both. Compare and contrast to Ronald Witherup in The Bible Companion: 
The origin of some of the text might well be in secular love poetry from the ancient Near East, but its preservation in the Bible assures us that there is also a deeper meaning to appreciate...Interpreters through history have always appreciated deeper levels of the text. Rabbinic interpreers saw in this love relationship the symbol of God's covenantal love for Israel as his bride. Christian interpreters picked up on this deeper symbolism, seeing in the book the allegory of the relationship of Christ to his church.

  posted by TS @ 07:52  
 

 
Where I've Visited 



create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out our California travel guide

And the hat tip goes to...(envelope please)...Some Have Hats

  posted by TS @ 07:38  
 

 
What If They Had Met?   - new fiction

He was jowly from a long history of fast food washed down with cheap beer, but he still had his hair. The man across the table looked a mirror image but for being older and having less to offer a barber.

“So, how’s the karaoke circuit been treating ya?” asked the older man. 

“That ain’t fair. I’ve got some record deals brewing. And speakin' of brew, I ain't seen see yours at our QuikMart!”

“Well, that’s what you’re drinking partner. My fifteen minutes is over and it’s affecting sales.”

They sipped the beer and complained bitterly about the National Enquirer. 

“I don’t care what they say, it’s not what the rags think of us that matters, or the country or even the world. I've been given the promise dude. I remember it morning and night, every time I f—k up I remember the promise.” 

The older man shrugged and offered the younger a bowl of peanuts. They returned to a topic they had in common, their famous brothers. 

“They’re both smart as hell. If my brother had your brother’s discipline—“

“And if my brother had your brother’s charm —“

“They’d have ruled the world wouldn’t they of?”

"Like if chocolate met peanut butter."

A stranger walked up. “Don’t I know you?” he asked. 

“Prolly. I’m Roger Clinton, and this is Billy Carter.”

           ~

They parted company. On the jukebox a Patty Loveless song played...
After all my lonely nights
Without an end in sight
A morning shining bright for me awaits
Where the sweetest times will last
All's forgiven from the past

Someday I will
One day I know I will
Someday I will lead the parade

Though they've scattered through the years
Old friends will gather near
With nothing but the kindest words to say
And the sweetest times will last
All's forgiven from the past

Someday I will
One day I know I will
Someday I will lead the parade

And the sweetest times will last
All's forgiven from the past
Someday I will lead the parade

  posted by TS @ 07:28  
 

 
Stating the Obvious

Yogi Berra said that "baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical." Similarly, in many ways war is ninety percent mental, or psychological. So Bush can't say that things are going poorly or moderately poorly in Iraq, if in fact they are. Nor can he, or should he, say anything negative about the sorry state of Islam & Muslim culture because that worsen the situation; it's often best for leaders to not state publicly the root of a problem.

Ultimately terrorists won't be defeated from without, but from within. That is, it won't end until Muslims finally begin to shame their bloodthirsty co-religionists. The biggest Muslim scandal today isn't Osama Bin Laden, but his enablers - the Muslim community. Where are the Muslim protest marches against Osama? Why haven't contributions to mosques fallen precipitously? And, as Tom Friedman of the Times mentioned, there was a fatwa calling for the death of a novelist, Salman Rushdie, but no fatwa issued by any prominent cleric against a mass murderer like Osama bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri. Sigh.


'Makes up stories! Great, horrible enemy! Must be killed!'        
  'Bombs embassies, kills civilians, a bit overzealous at times but all-around good guy. Tips his barber well.' 


UPDATE: a more definitive piece here, via Julie.

  posted by TS @ 16:14  
July 13, 2005 

 
    Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts 

It's particularly easy to be snarky when blogging, because it feels like you're not really talking to anybody. Which is weird, given the fact that you're talking to everybody. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

In human affairs there is nothing from which he does not extract enjoyment, even from things that are most serious. If he converses with the learned and judicious, he delights in their talent, if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their stupidity. He is not even offended by professional jesters. With a wonderful dexterity he accommodates himself to every disposition. As a rule, in talking with women, even with his own wife, he is full of jokes and banter. No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one departs less from common sense. - Desiderius Erasmus on St. Thomas More, via Meredith of "Basia Me, Catholica Sum"

I can easily see how the nuclear family in and of itself tends to reduce family size. Having only one set of hands to care for baby is a massive job. Two sets of hands, is livable but hard. How having a grandparent, aunt, cousin, etc. around to help out makes a big boost in terms of restoring sanity to new parents. I'm certain this logic carries forward when adding further children to the mix, although after 2 I'm told economies of scale begin to kick in. I know there are many other factors influencing small family size -- including the expense of raising children in this culture and the death of the family wage for the married man. But that's my two cents for the night. - Olde Oligarch

I read somewhere that the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs was nearing its apex in America, but that outsourcing of service jobs was just beginning and would soon be having a huge impact. That rings true...Tonight, as I was out buying a pizza for dinner and fighting the long line at the carry-out at Pizza Hut, it occurred to me that outsourcing begins at home. I don't fix my own car anymore, don't even change my own oil anymore. I don't fix my own furnace, I don't even try. Someone came and replaced our doors and windows, we had our roof done by a firm -- my own father, at my age, would have spent his evenings doing all those things and my own mother would have spent the evening making dinner instead of us having carry-out. It's a changing world. - Rock of "Lofted Nest"

Here's a tip I learned long ago...and it works. First, remember: the commandment is to love your neighbors (including your enemies). It doesn't demand that you like them! So. About that SOB who is constantly telling you exactly what you're doing wrong with your life...or that total idiot who just cut you off in traffic...or that in-law who insists on telling you the proper way to raise your own children...or that [fill in the blank #*@(@*#&@ person]? Here's what you want to do: (I didn't make this up. A friend -- a holy person, actually -- clued me in on this one long ago.) Pray for the creep. (N.B. It's probably not a hot idea to use the word "creep" in your prayer.) Here's a prayer I often use: "Dear God, please put that so-and-so in a higher place than me in Your Heavenly Kingdom. Amen." That's it! - the inimitable Pewlady

Any discussions about the "practical" aspects of [early reception of the sacrament of Confirmation] must take a backseat to theology, and the mis-placement of confirmation oh, lo these many decades in many parts of the world has really been a travesty, and done great damage to a proper theological understanding of confirmation itself and the sacraments of initiation as a whole. And, turning to pragmatic considerations, anyway, as we've discussed here before, adolescent confirmation, shorn from its baptismal associations and proximity to Eucharist, by 10-15 years in the life of the one celebrating, has become, in practice, less a sacrament (in perception) than a ritualized sociological marker of, not Christian initiation, but initiation into adulthood (sort of), and, more practically, a tool for blackmail...go through this, and you won't have to go to religious ed any more. More common than you think. - Amy Welborn of "Open Book"

For more than a day after intercourse with a woman, a man will experience a moderate psychological aversion to women other than the one he slept with. - Patrick of Orthonormal Basis, on a study that lends support to the exclusivity factor in relationships

As a side note, Philip Jenkins, an Episcopalian, has a line in his book "Hidden Gospels" suggesting early Church fathers would have thought it absurd that Christians should have Scripture in their homes. They couldn't envision Scripture outside the Sacraments.- Rich Leonardi of "Ten Reasons"

The theory of evolution is far more than adaptation and survival of the fittest, or however the popular mind seeks to characterize it. The materialism and randomness at the heart of the theory must be dealt with by theists, who do their faith no credit by simply saying, "Oh, God could have started it all." At heart, the Darwinian theory of evolution and traditional Judeo-Christian theism are a much harder fit than many people think. That said, I'm not for teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. What I am for is a more honest instruction in the theory of evolution - acknoweldging the problems, the gaps and the intelligent, scientifically-based challenges to it. One could do this, I'd think, without espousing Creationism. - Amy Welborn

In Germany, he was asked about survival of the fittest. He told them it was not a strange thing at all -- the fit will survive of themselves. "But in my experience," he said, "what I have seen is the survival of the unfit. And that is where God's glory comes in." - Sundar Singh via "Happy Catholic"

  posted by TS @ 11:57  
 

 
For Whiter Teeth Buy Crest

One of the things least appealing about modern life is how easy it is to drown in all the trivialities and superficialities. Perhaps I've getting curmudgeonly, but it's the little things that annoy. Such as the ubiquity of advertising.

For example, I'm watching the All Star game and the camera lingers on someone vaguely familiar. And it's Billy Bob Thorton. Big whoop, I think. And so you'd think that would be it, right? No. The announcers do a commercial for his next movie! This was planned; there was nothing inadvertent about it. So now I'm wondering: did Thorton go to the game for love of the game or pimp his movie? And since when did we sign up for commercials outside the alloted 2, er, 3, er, 4 minutes between innings?

In the past ten years corporations have gotten really good at simply not leaving any profit on the table. Bleeding you the way the gov't does. Like having both an income tax and a sales tax, movie houses have discovered the profit in both having a fixed price at the gate and an extra tax within by making you sit through twenty minutes of commercials. The correct consumer response is to avoid going to movie houses. So you buy DVDs and soon they'll have commercials you can't skip through.

My friend Ham o' Bone begins filming his movie, or at least two "shorts" of seven minutes long, next week. Which is probably what prompted a dream last night in which I was looking for stuff to film at a local grocery mart. I was looking for something meaningful to say amidst a tide of Tide - but everything seemed washed of meaning. I wonder if decreasing patience with trivialities is the definition of a religious fanatic? Or is it the definition of the spoiled & impatient?

I was under the impression that Bone was going to show these film "shorts" to various & sundry movie people with short attention spans (i.e. those would rather watch film than read scripts). But he's going to try to get it independently funded by doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs (to the tune of at least a million) and get the movie made on his own. But there's the problem of distribution. And how will he advertise---

  posted by TS @ 07:52  
 

 
Man Behind the Curtain

Amy Welborn made some provocative comments concerning the Wizard of Oz: 
"I've always (well, not always...for the past couple of decades, anyway) wondered about this, and Michael brought it up the other night when we were in Knoxville, and we all sat around watching The Wizard of Oz on TCM. Is The Wizard of Oz responsible for the massive loss of faith and the embrace of subjectivism in the West? Could it be? I'm sure you've thought about this too - no all-powerful Wizard, just a little man behind the curtain, tricking everyone. No need to really have anything real within - just believe that you have a brain, a heart and courage, and take on the external signs, and you're there, baby."
It's certainly a very Pelagian story. I recall as a child being let down by the ending - that the wizard (the God figure) was so powerless. It's a very naturalistic story in keeping with those who think Christ didn't multiply the loaves and fishes but simply inspired people to express their latent generosity by sharing what they had on them.

Many progressive Catholics appear to see the sacraments in a similar light, not powerful as conduits of grace in their own right due to the promises of Christ, but only psychologically valuable. Ronald Rollheiser in "Holy Longing" says daily Massgoers don't go to be sustained by God or seek his blessing but to keep themselves from falling apart, comparing them to alcoholics going to AA meetings. For them any old ritual will do and God is ancillary. Sad.

  posted by TS @ 07:44  
 

 
Terror & Torture

I'm not an expert on torture techniques, except with respect to the infliction of my poetry on unsuspecting readers. But I do watch the television show 24, which gives me some credibility. And the technique seems to be to occasionally let off. Let the guy think about it. Give him some room to come to the conclusion that he needs to see things your way.

So when I read something by Victor David Hanson the other day I wondered at the similarity between torture and terrorism: 
Terror is the signature of the Islamist: hit, back off; hit, back off — hoping in a few years to erode the will and nerve of affluent and leisured Western countries. 

Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt. Train bombings in Madrid and bus explosions in London, like the carnage in Iraq, are preferable, since they are enough to terrify and demoralize the Westerner but not quite enough to knock sense into him that only military resistance and victory will save his civilization.

So the attacks will never quite be of such a stature to convince Western voters that one more such explosion will destroy their societies. The trick is instead to wage war insidiously, incrementally, and stealthily to avoid an overwhelming response. A cooling-off period in between 9/11 and 7/7 in which Western apologists, pacifists, and Islamist sympathizers go to work is essential for the terror to continue. 
Perhaps. But it seems that the West is even more threatened, if less dramatically, by low population replacement rates. Europe, like an old soldier, won't die but will likely fade away.

Finally, ABC's This Week constantly reminds us of soldier's deaths. Here's the story of one soldier's heroism.

  posted by TS @ 12:46  
July 12, 2005 

 
Crayons to Oils

This blogger's visit to The Cloisters brought back vivid memories. I'd visited there seven years ago this month and recall enjoying the tranquility and the sense of history.

I went back to my trip log and found it didn't stand up well. The writing was trite and unremarkable even though at the time it sung. But that doesn't negate the "joie of words" experienced at that time and nor does it negate the current joy of words as blogged here, even if they not age well. 

Writing doesn't much matter but it reminded me how we as a church have progressed doctrinally, developing into a great oak from a small acorn. The joy Israel took in her books of Moses was no less joyful for its "looking through the glass darkly" and incompleteness.

  posted by TS @ 11:17  
 

 
Deja vu

  posted by TS @ 07:51  
 

 
Re: Journalism

I think the root cause of American's disillusionment with the press is not Jayson Blair and his ilk. Those who have brought true shame to the profession in recent years don't bother me that much. Every institution has their Jayson Blairs; the fact that there are corrupt police or lying journalists or child-abusing priests does not mean that the police, newspapers and the Catholic Church should be abolished or looked down upon. It only means that when a crime is made known the institution has a responsibility to correct and admit it. (And blogs certainly help journalists with that - St. Blog's own Christopher Blosser recently shed light with an excellent post on Pope Benedict's history that resulted in an admission of error from the writer for the The American Spectator.)

What does bother me is the seemingly intentional bias one encounters in newspapers like the Dispatch. Like not having a home-grown conservative on the Dispatch editorial page. Like having a regular guest political columnist who is odious on the life issues (Professor Oldenquist of OSU) without a contra voice. And like a recent Sunday front page article on gay marriage that was unintentionally hilarious for the way it framed the issue.

No doubt a certain amount of bias is unavoidable because we all come with all our viewpoints. But it's the lack of effort to overcome bias that makes people think less of journalists. "Coloring the News" by William McGowan and Bernard Goldberg's books are very persuasive on this point.

Journalists have a remarkably difficult job because fairness requires enormous discipline, and many writers seem to be long on passion but short on discipline.

  posted by TS @ 07:35  
 

 
My Fair Brother-in-Law

Went to a musical Saturday night, "My Fair Lady" put on by the arts council of one of the suburbs of Columbus. My brother-in-law played Professor Higgins and did a marvelous job. I love expressions of joy in movies which is why I'd always liked Gene Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain" and why I particularly liked the moment that Eliza "got it" - the "Rain in Spain" scene - in this production.

My father-in-law mentioned during intermission how his son had lived this for the past six months or more. Spent hours and hours at play practice, memorizing lines and missing family gatherings and all for what? Three performances. Poof, and it's over, he said. (I thought of it as akin to blogging - a lot of time spent doing something that has that similar Poof! quality.) I'd never looked at it like that before. Hadn't thought about all that went behind this two or three hour performance. When we congratulated the actors afterwards we were thanking them not just for the performance but for that iceberg of time & energy submerged beneath this evening's tip.

  posted by TS @ 16:43  
July 11, 2005 

 
Credits

Lately fellow bloggers have done a yeoman's job in directing me to instructive and/or pleasurable books. I'll have to take any future suggestions more seriously *grin*. In no particular order:


Steven Riddle recommended the engaging Randy Wayne White novel "Sanibel Flats". It's the pluperfect backyard hammock read. 

Jeff Culbreath recommended John Meehan's Two Towers, which I started Friday and has been surgically attached to me ever since. (I even brought it to Saturday night's "My Fair Lady"; my mother-in-law became briefly interested in it thinking it was about the New York tragedy.)

Recently finished Frank Deford's marvelous biography of Christy Matthewson and John J. McGraw. Mark of "Irish Elk" recommended it after I'd already started reading it but still receives post-credit for his good taste. The book is so well-written that I looked in vain for another Deford offering, finally settling on Michael Sokolove's "Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose" which looks to be a more depressing read than Deford's "Old Ball Game".

Other recommendations that I have followed up on, in the sense of buying the book though shamefully not in having started yet:

Kathy the Recusant Carmelite: "The Persecutor" by Sergei Kourdakov
William 'The Quiet Man' Luse: "Joan of Arc" by John Beevers
Mama 'a book a day keeps the doc at bay' T: "A Green Journey" by Jon Hassler
Tom of Disputations: "A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist" by Abbot Vonier
Steven '20,000 Books Under the Bed' Riddle: "Nourished by the Word: Reading the Bible Contemplatively"
Bill 'Rock Star' White: "Modern Times" by Paul Johnson

  posted by TS @ 16:14 
 
 

 
Kreitzberg's Baby Photo!



Via Old Oligarch.

  posted by TS @ 13:50  
 

 
Pedigrees

Just finished a biography of Robert Hamilton Bishop, the first president of Miami University of Ohio (founded 1809). Bishop lived an interesting life in interesting times and it's fun to construct the "intellectual family trees" of great men - noting who influenced who and how ideas were handed down. (I recently read that there was a straight line from Luther to Hitler but that seems to be taking it a bridge too far.) Bishop was primarily influenced by Adam Ferguson:


Ferguson, Adam , 1723–1816, Scottish philosopher and historian. He was professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Edinburgh (1759–85). His Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) criticized earlier theories of a state of nature; it was an important contribution to intellectual history and influenced Hegel. In his Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), Ferguson advanced the principle of perfection and attempted to reconcile self-interest and universal benevolence...In his ethical system Ferguson treats man as a social being, illustrating his doctrines by political examples. As a believer in the progression of the human race, he placed the principle of moral approbation in the attainment of perfection..."We find in his method the wisdom and circumspection of the Scottish school, with something more masculine and decisive in the results. The principle of perfection is a new one, at once more rational and comprehensive than benevolence and sympathy, which in our view places Ferguson as a moralist above all his predecessors."
One of Ferguson's influences was French political philosopher Montesquieu, especially his Esprit des Lois (1748):
By far, [Montesquieu's] most influential work is The Spirit of the Laws (1748). Two main ideas are presented in this analysis concerning the nature and workings of government. His first assertion is that forms of government will invariably differ according to the political and social climate and circumstances which they have to deal with. He concluded from analysis that despotic rule is best in large empires as to maintain control and order, especially those in the "hot climates." As for democracy, he concluded that small city-states would be the best situation for it, because it would be Senk simpler to maintain and govern, with general agreement of the populace being easier to achieve. His second assertion, the most important of the treatise, is the fact that a balance and separation of powers is needed for an efficient and successful government.

  posted by TS @ 08:13  
 

 
The Bloggification of Newspapers

It had to happen sooner or later. The self-indulgent post has appeared in the newspaper. 

The editor of the Columbus Dispatch now regularly serves up a column that attempts a spiritual work of mercy: enlightening the ignorant, that is, we the readers. Disturbed by the low regard journalists are held by the public he uses the column as an apologia for the profession and ends up sounding like Officer Krumpke's West Side Story delinquents: "we're just misunderstood / deep down inside there is good". (One could say that he's just following Kinky Friedman's father's sage advice: "treat adults like children and children like adults". I find that I've become more childish as I age if only because in the cutthroat world of childhood and adolescence survival trumped self-indulgence.)

The column tends to be a bit whiney and defensive, which is not uncharacteristic of blogs (though not St. Blogger's, who are indefatiguable in their sheer outwardness). One can see his reasoning: "we buy ink by the gallon so why not spill some defending our grand profession?" And so the article begins with the customer's lack of gratitude: "you expect us to be there for you when you note an injustice..." and yet we readers don't give back the love. Apparently it's not enough that it's his job. Can you tell I've been reading the heartless Florence King today?

Anyway, his column inspires me to want to write an apologia for computer programmers. Let's see...

"Surveys show that computer programmers are not loved by the general public despite the constant problem-solving that we provide (ok, problems we introduced, hey let's not get technical). So your computer has a bug and who you gonna call?"

You getteth the idea. 

I'm not against whiney, self-indulgent posts in blogs but I'd rather not see them in the newspaper. I like beer, but that doesn't mean there ought to be bars in chapels.

  posted by TS @ 20:58  
July 10, 2005 

 
Zell, the Great Indoorsman - new fiction!

Zell Lawson was an inveterate reader and referred to himself as a fine indoorsman. If he’d coined the word then he thought that an outrage: what was it about the outdoors that suggested a man define himself by it without an equivalent for those who labor under General Electric’s finest? 

He couldn’t understand it when he heard folks say that they could never work “behind a desk”. At least not until after he’d gotten a job and found out that the thrill of having his own desk and nameplate lasted thirty-six days. The thrill of toiling in God’s earth might last longer but he couldn’t know for sure. 

But he did know he had a soul and he began to notice the effect of soul on body and body on soul. He knew they spent their lifetimes dancing together and how one never did nuthin’ without it affecting the other and that they were more closely bound than white on rice. What was the effect of all this concrete and artificial lighting on the body and soul? Grace builds on nature but what if we were killing nature by laying concrete and spending the best hours of every day under the influence of fluorescence? 

He found a book about the ‘70s crop of homesteaders and back-to-the-landers. And he wasn’t sure if he was sad or relieved when he learned the great majority had long since come back to the desks and offices and artificial light. The odds were excellent that if he'd tried it the results would be identical and yet…and yet it felt like cheating. It was like looking at the back of the book for an answer to a high school mathematics problem. Or looking at a bible study guide for the meaning of a particular passage….

  posted by TS @ 23:59  
July 8, 2005 

 
Catching up on Last Weekend

Busier than usual so many more images to assimilate. First a fond favorite – going to Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. Was Clemens pitching? I didn’t notice. Did the Reds win? Okay, I did notice. But it barely affected my mood. 

Oh but there’s a peacefulness felt there on the orderly diamond. Perhaps I've played just enough baseball to be able to feel every hit and shag every fly. My muscles have memories and I move with the fielders and strike with the hitters and they don’t even know it. The field is an effervescent green and the sun shines unfailingly. And the boats go by on the muddy river just outside the stadium. And all I can think is: I have to get here again. We move to the smoking section and smoke cigars behind an imaginary line that an usher enforces. And we drink Germanic beer in a Germanic town as the Germanic Reds, slow of foot but hefty of bat, strike out like so many Mighty Caseys (or at least the German equivalent). 

The next day is the 4th and so there is the parade tour. First the local parade; we ride there on our bikes and catch some of it. My favorite was the barbershop singers singing “God Bless America”. Then we go to the alternative 4th of July parade, the DooDah Parade, because I wanted to see how the other half (progressives) live. We left Red State America and travel fifteen minutes to Blue State. 

As we walk to the parade site we see them lining up and there's an old man sitting on a chair wearing nothing but a barrell, and we fear that he doesn’t have anything on underneath. We don’t verify. 

The parade starts and I’m wondering when dressing like a priest or nun will get old. Apparently some schticks just ne’er get old. And they must hate the Church to endure 93 degree temperatures dressed in black. They go by carrying a banner that says “Separation of Church and Hate”. 

Then there’s a float with a huge dinosaur straddled by the “Runaway Bride” dressed in a wedding dress. Later a float of full-figured ladies allied against breast reduction surgery. My favorite was the little group of five that held signs saying “People Against Signs” and “Signs Lie” and such. My type of humor. The DooDah parade makes me wishes Red America's parades were no less patriotic but with more wit & humor.


DooDah parade (photo credits: my wife)... another pic here & here

  posted by TS @ 23:07  
 

 
Writers Who Blog
"Blogs are a way to listen in and find out what people find funny and respond to," said Marion Maneker, editorial director at HarperCollins's HarperBusiness unit, who said it was too early to determine whether blogs would affect sales. 

  posted by TS @ 12:49  
 

 
Quotable

I always thought there was no way Shakespeare could've labored in the sense of belaboring:
Mark Van Doren (who also wrote very well on all the plays in his 1939 book Shakespeare) once remarked that Shakespeare must have written his plays easily or he could not have written them at all. There is just too much in them: so much brilliance, so much meaning, all happening at once. This is all too much if a writer has to work it up. Shakespeare wrote plays the way Mozart wrote music. 

-Jeffrey Hart

  posted by TS @ 07:10  
 

 
Latest in NR

Michael Potemra reviews "Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism" by Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom in Nat'l Review: 
In this well-written volume, Noll and Nystrom give a lucid — and often highly inspiring — account of the amazing distance Catholics and Protestants have traveled in the years since JFK’s statement. By 2004, evangelical politician Gary Bauer was able to say the following: “When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech that the Vatican would not tell him what to do, evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do.” Bauer’s statement was hardly even controversial: In a poll that same year, evangelicals gave a higher approval rating to Pope John Paul II (59 percent) than to Jerry Falwell (44) or Pat Robertson (54). 

The ice had melted on the Catholic side as well. In 1956, a commentator in the Catholic magazine Priest was still dismissing Martin Luther as “a lewd satyr whose glandular demands were the ultimate cause of his break with the Christian Church.” Less than a decade later, a writer in the same periodical admitted that “we’d feel quite silly today declaiming against Luther in the intemperate words of yesterday”; by 2004, a Catholic reviewer of a new Luther biography was declaring that Luther simply could not “have foreseen that the Church of Rome would some four centuries later, at Vatican Council II, adopt many of the reforms that he championed.”... 

"What we see today may be described as an incarnation of Christ in Catholic form and an incarnation of Christ in evangelical form. Since there is only one Christ, these incarnations are pulled toward each other."

  posted by TS @ 21:26  
July 7, 2005 

 
And Then There Were None?

What happens if Bush can't get a judge through the obstructionist Senate Democratic minority by October? Does the court operate on eight justices? And since it's unlikely either party will control sixty Senate seats this century, will each subsequent vacant seat go unfilled? Will it be...(drumroll)...Justice Thomas deciding everything by himself in 2030?

  posted by TS @ 21:19  
 

 
On The Demise of France's 35-Hour Work Week

NY Times article :
How could the futurologists be so wrong? George Jetson, we should recall -- the person many of us cartoon-watchers assumed we would someday become -- worked a three-hour day, standard in the interplanetary era. Back in 1970, Alvin Toffler predicted that by 2000 we would have so much free time that we wouldn't know how to spend it. 

Economic globalization obviously has a great deal to do with the change. It has leveled the playing field all over the world, so that the have-nots can now compete more equally with the haves, especially if they are willing to work harder, longer and for lower wages, which so many of them are. And the haves, in turn, find that they have to pick up the pace just to stay even. 

But there may be a more insidious force manifesting itself -- something along the lines of an evolutionary law that says, paradoxically, the more you try to simplify or eliminate work, the more of it there is to do. Scholars estimate that medieval peasants, for example, worked between 120 and 150 days a year....The Nobel Prize-winning economic historian Robert William Fogel has studied what he calls the "efficiency of the human engine" and found that the mechanical advances of the Industrial Revolution were paralleled by an equal increase in the human body's size, strength and endurance. In his view the great growth industry of the 19th and 20th centuries was the capacity for work itself. 

The more work we do, apparently, the more we're able to do, and though Fogel himself takes a sort of Toffler-like view of the 21st century, predicting that leisure will become the next great growth industry, there's little evidence of that right now. Working hours in America -- the nation in the world with by far the most efficient human engines -- have risen steadily over the last three decades. And far from complaining, we have adopted a superior, moralizing attitude that sees work not as a necessary evil, a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

  posted by TS @ 16:36  
 

 
Can't Keep Up...

...with either Scott Hahn or Cardinal Ratzinger's prodigious output of writings. I just learned that Hahn now has his definitive bible study out, which he considers to be his most important work. A back-to-school gift for high-school or college students?

  posted by TS @ 14:29  
 

 
Takes All Kinds

Jonah Goldberg cracks me up:
That my words do not carry weight with you is not evidence whatsoever that my words do not carry weight.
Let's hope someone starts the SADL (Skydiver's Anti-Defamation League). KTC? *grin*

  posted by TS @ 09:25  
 

 
Spinning Spam Into "Poetry"

Don't forget: the more you drink, the better this blog reads. Here's another poem made up of 100% biodegradable spam:


This site is straightforward 
when it comes to finding what you need. buckshot

Hey, friend, I see 
you are very upset! XANA 
L0RAAZEPAM, AMBIEN surely jealous
meant shining.
You were Accepted.
Here is your Money.
Inspired by reception of email with the subject header:
This site is straightforward when it comes to finding what you need. buckshot

  posted by TS @ 08:44  
 

 
Quick Asides

Was listening to WLW, "the Nation's Station", 50,000 watts out of Cincinnati. And I learned that the game show host Wink Martindale has a "game show room" at his home. He asks guests play board games like Trivial Pursuit so he can moderate. 

The mind reels, doesn't it? It's hard not to come to the conclusion that God wanted him to be a game show host. Do those who love their job do so because they're extremely good at it or are are they good at it because they love doing it?
*
Listening to David McCullough on Russert's show and he said that many of the key players of the Revolutionary War (such as Thomas Paine) were Quakers who had put aside their pacifism, recognizing that "some wars are worth fighting". Wow. That's not what I thought pacifism was about. 

*
A progressive Catholic I know was surprised when I told her that Cardinal Ratzinger, back in the '60s, was on the "liberal" wing of the Church. It's almost as if that gave the Pope a bit more credibility in her eyes. Conservatives are given no credit if they've always been conservative because then they are seen as blindly & brainlessly following Church teaching. Of course, on the other side, if you change your mind someone could say "well, they were wrong once, they could be wrong again." It's all about faith.

*

I try not to get tangled in apologetics but when the topic comes up and I have a lengthy exchange with someone I think it's God's sneaky way of getting me to pray for that person because afterwards I almost always experience PASD (post-apologetic stress disorder), characterized by "I should've said this!" and "Gosh I sounded self-righteous there!". Also Bishop Sheen's "win an argument, lose a soul" resonates. So I end up praying that God undoes any damage I'd done. 

*

Picked up some good ol' KFC ('a heart attack in a sack' to quote Tim McGraw) and there was an eager, enthusiastic worker at the window. She was probably a Somali (Columbus has the second largest population of Somalis in the country). Dark-skinned and pretty, she had one obvious flaw: a missing front tooth. She had braces on the rest of them, which suggested this was a work-in-progress and that soon she'd have teeth as good as any American. Is that what Purgatory is like? Getting our teeth fixed while being eager of mien because we're in the anteroom of Heaven?

  posted by TS @ 07:10  
 

 
Habit of Being

Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post on Flannery O'Connor. And the hat tip goes to... Two Sleepy Mommies

  posted by TS @ 14:22  
July 6, 2005 

 
Partly Cloudy

The forecast for the Supreme Court vacancy is already looking a bit gloomy. I heard on the radio Pres. Bush defending Alberto Gonzalez. It's sobering if Bush is even thinking of nominating him. Also the President made some seemingly contradictory statements as quoted in the Wash Times link above:
Bush said he would have no "litmus test" that disqualifies candidates because of their opinions on abortion and gay marriage.

"I'll pick people who, one, can do the job, and people who are honest, people who are bright and people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not use the bench to legislate from," Bush said.
Hopefully this is on order of the single gal saying, "I have no litmus test that disqualifies a potential husband because of his opinions on religion. But I do want someone who will enthusiastically attend Mass every Sunday."

Because if you want someone to strictly interpret the Constitution, then they won't find the right to an abortion in there. Even honest liberals such as this author admit that the Roe v. Wade was pulled out of thin air since there's no right to privacy found in the Constitution. My question is: "do you consider 'settled law' settled if the law was originally legislated from the Court?"


  posted by TS @ 12:26  
 

 
  Spanning the Globe To Bring You The Constant Variety Of Posts

Is it a sin for a moron to call an imbecile an idiot? - tagline of the blog "Nehring the Edge"

Ignatius Insight presents lots of Catholic bloggers on "The Problem With Blogs". My basic thought on blogging is "Take what helps or amuses you and leave the rest." It reminds me of my sister's theory of throwing a party: "If they're going to complain about free food and free entertainment, they're jerks anyway." But I am at least mentally healthy enough that I can't dredge up any guilt about blogging. People who are bored or irritated are obviously the wrong audience... I don't see how someone could be annoyed by a blog any more than they could be annoyed by a sign in the neighbor's yard. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

I am troubled by Orthodoxy’s “Easternness.” The coherence and power of Orthodoxy is partially achieved by excluding the Western tradition from its spiritual and theological life. One is hard-pressed to find an Orthodox writer who speaks highly of the Western Church, of her saints, ascetics, and theologians, of her manifold contributions to Christian religion and Western civilization....If the catholicity of Orthodoxy can only be purchased by the practical expulsion of Augustine and Aquinas, then, at least in my own mind, Orthodoxy’s claim to be the one and true Church is seriously undermined...A truly catholic Church will keep these great theologians in conversation with each other, and their differences and disagreements will invite the Church to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the divine mysteries. - from "Pontifications", prior to his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism

The famous psychologist Carl Jung put his professional reputation on the line with his book "Synchronicity." A synchonicity is kind of like a coincidence only it's a coincidence with great meaning and purpose to the person who notices it. If you're a fan, or an idle wonderer, about Intelligent Design, Jung's book is the equivalent of Intelligent Design only with Psychology. In a famous example, Jung is working with a difficult patient whose totally rational view of the world prevents her from overcoming her psychological problems. She relates a dream she had about a golden scarab beetle. Jung knew that the scarab held great significance to ancient Egyptians as a symbol of rebirth. As the woman was talking, they heard a tapping on the window, Jung opened the window and in flew a golden scarab beetle. The total shock of the instant resulted in the woman's rational view of the world being dropped and Jung was able to help her by acknowledging that there was a deeper meaning in the universe. - Rock of "Lofted Nest"

We will NOT, however, be staying in Key West, where one cultivates weirdness until it is merely boring. - Steven Riddle 

One of the more fashionable ways of talking about faith these days is to use the image of the "story." We're told that what faith is essentially all about is finding a "story" (or "narrative" or "myth") that is meaningful to you, that fits, that informs your life and gives you strength for your journey....it's a day [feast of Sts Peter & Paul] to confront the lie, that has indeed infected the way Catholics talk about spirituality, that this journey is all about finding that blasted story. What an insult to the martyrs. What a violation of their experience of Christ, which was no page-turner, but the encounter with the Living One, whose impact on them was such that they could not but say "yes" when he called them to follow. Not to just keep telling a story and inviting others to groove to it if they feel like it, either. But called to invite others to meet that same Living One and be saved, reconciled and redeemed by Him. - Amy Welborn

Why should you worry whether God wants you to reach the Heavenly home by way of the desert or by the fields, when by the one as well as by the another one arrives all the same at a Blessed Eternity? -- St. Pio of Pietrelcina via "Sancta Sanctis"

The notion that somebody in New Zealand was praying for me was more than I could imagine. I have never been an emotional worshipper of Christ; I have never felt the weight of His love and presence literally drive me to the floor prostrate. I can say that no longer, as I have felt just that in the last 24 hours, and have cried the cries of a child humbled at the love of my Heavenly Father and His providential workings in my life. - Lance Salyers, assistant prosecutor in Dayton, Oh. fired over a blog entry

What does it avail you to argue profoundly of the Trinity if you be wanting in humility, and consequently be displeasing to the Trinity? - St. Thomas a Kempis, "Imitation of Christ" quoted on a blog

I cannot ever hear "Cat's in the Cradle" without starting to cry a little. I really can't. "We'll get together then..."--the thing about fatherhood, I sometimes think, is that it is so thoroughly a metaphor for our relationship to God the Father that no real human father can suffice. That's part of why ordinary human fatherhood deserves so much honor. Because ordinary human fathers bear so much of the brunt of their children's aloneness. Mothers (sometimes) get the desperate confessions of fear and sickness; fathers often don't even get that solace, that trust. Every mother is Mary, Mother of God (Mother of Sorrows, Queen of Heaven, Mary at Cana and Mary at Calvary), but every father is (symbolically) Yahweh, not Joseph. And it's terribly hard. So I guess... there's nothing really to say except, Thank you. - Eve Tushnet on Father's Day

I volunteer at a crisis pregnancy center. A 16 year old girl came in for a pregnancy test. As we waited for the results she was visibly trembling and near to tears. When the result was negative, she began to cry and laugh and bounce up and down. I asked her why she was so happy. She looked at me like I was a total idiot and and with that "duh, you're so stupid" tone that teenagers do so well, she answered "I'm way too young to have a baby". I leaned toward her and said "Then you're also too young to be doing what makes babies." For a long moment she stared at me with her mouth open and not breathing, then in a very small voice she said "No one ever told me that before." - commenter on Fructus Ventris, replying to Alicia's post with the line "I don't understand why so many people are surprised that sex leads to pregnancy."

I think the other thing that has changed, though, is the willingness of Christians (evangelical? All of us? I don't know) to be publicly honest about failure and weakness. Christians have always sat in Church and listened to sermons about how sinful they are and how much they need to repent. Christians have always read books inspiring them to be better people. But in the public conversation, in the process of creating an image for what Christians were, there was a hard shell of propriety, a deep desire not to show any fractures to the world, despite the bumper sticker sentiment, "Christians aren't perfect; just forgiven." I do think that the public image, as crafted and presented by Christians, of what the ideal Christian is, has shifted, or is in the process of doing so, and that image is far more likely to include public acknoweldgement of sin, temptation and weakness than it was a few decades ago. That's intriguing. - Amy Welborn

  posted by TS @ 11:51  
 

 
You could go...

..a month of Sundays and not hear a decent country song on the radio, so I have to thank Tim McGraw for his latest. Now that's country! And a beautiful, sunny day like today also conjures up the ol' Merle Haggard song, "Big City".

  posted by TS @ 09:30  
 

 
Better Living Through Fiction

Cindy McCray had a favorite saying. It was “if you’ve got your health, then you’ve got everything.” 

She learned it from her father and it became her mantra. She told it to the grocery store clerk and to the person who did her nails and to the local city bus driver. She shouted it from the rooftops and told everyone she met for it amazed her how few realized it. Every morning she checked that her limbs were working and that her breathing was sound and then she thanked God.

Her husband Sam was the superstitious sort and said that if you think too much about your health you'll jinx it. He also said that if you get too high over good health then you’ll get too low when you’re sick but Cindy always seemed to be in such excellent health that his theory went untested. 

On her 28th birthday Cindy said that celebrating a birthday every year was too infrequent. "Our time on earth is too precious and brief to recognize it annually – why not measure it in days?" So every day at 10:38am (the time she was born) she’d sing Happy Birthday to herself and she'd sing it again at 5:19pm for Sam (the time he was born) and they'd eat a piece of birthday cake. (She didn’t put candles on it due to the city fire code.) Her husband, in putting up with it, wasn’t sure if he was edging closer to sanctity or insanity, or whether there was really any difference. He knew he loved her despite her eccentricities. He also knew when his real birthday came it didn’t feel like his real birthday. It felt like just another day. 

When Cindy turned 12,723 she drove to the store as was her custom. (“Cake supplies don’t grow on trees!” she told Sam, when asked about her grocery receipts.) She was proceeding through an intersection when a huge green truck tried to make a left at the same intersection. She slammed on the brakes but it was too late – there was the shock of impact and she looked down amazed at the sheer wrongness of seeing bone jutting from skin. It nearly made her vomit for bone was meant to be used but never seen. She lost consciousness before she could check the extent of other injuries. 

Her condition stabilized and Sam held her hand in the intensive care unit. He feared greatly, not so much for her life now but for how she would handle her ruined health. 

“Honey…,” she said with great effort.

“Yes?”

“It’s almost 5:19…”

He cried.

  posted by TS @ 07:07  
 

 
Quotable

"Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors." - Abigail Adams

  posted by TS @ 10:49  
July 5, 2005 

 
word and Word

Recently the eparchy (Eastern Catholic equivalent of 'diocese') of the local Byzantine Catholic Church decided to change the word "testament" to "covenant" in the words of consecration. I've been reading a lot recently about the difference between covenant and testament, which I won't go into in this post, but suffice it to say that despite covenant being more accurate I'll miss the words "this is the blood of the new testament" because the first time I heard it it unified the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist anew for me. It was a way of saying that Christ not only gave his word concerning the promises of the New Testament but signed them in Blood. 

St. Augustine writes of the gift of Scripture: "God is faithful, for he has put himself under a debt to us, not as if he had received anything from us, but by promising us so much. The word of promise was too little for him: he wanted to bind himself in writing, by giving us, as it were, a handwritten version of his promises."

  posted by TS @ 09:26  
 

 
In Fairness to Lewis... (see previous post)

Here's his self-defense. You make the call. Via Jay Nordlinger of NRO, a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo:
BARTIROMO: . . . Do you think that you have misread [the Iraq situation] at all? 

LEWIS: Yes, I think I was a little too optimistic, but what I misread, I think, was not so much what happens in Iraq as what happens here.

. . . BARTIROMO: What do you mean?

LEWIS: I mean, the response, the way that the media have reported what's happening in Iraq. I mean, I understand that one bridge destroyed makes a better story than ten bridges built. But nevertheless, the situation in Iraq, the standard of living, the improvement in general conditions to the Iraqi people, and the measure of support that we enjoy among the Iraqis — all these are far better than one would gather from simply following the media.

[Bartiromo asks Professor Lewis about Senator Kennedy's comparison of Iraq to Vietnam.]

LEWIS: I think that is a disastrous comparison. If you listen to the propaganda of the fundamentalists in Iraq and elsewhere, they have a litany that they keep repeating. They say, "The Americans have become degenerate. They are soft and pampered. They can't take it. Hit them and they'll run." And then they repeat: Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, and all the other small episodes since which brought no effective response. Talking about Vietnam now will merely confirm them, tell them that they are right, because we all know how Vietnam ended, and that will assure them they have a good chance that this will end the same way. And they have just won a considerable success in Spain . . .

BARTIROMO: What has surprised you most about the events in post-war Iraq?

LEWIS: What has surprised me most is the indecision which is shown by us, not by them. You have to remember that we began with a rather unfavorable record. In '91, the time of the Gulf War, President Bush Sr. called on the Iraqi people to revolt against the tyrant. They did. They revolted against the tyrant. In the meantime, we made a cease-fire agreement with the tyrant and then sat and watched while he crushed the revolt . . . You can understand therefore that when we call on them again to revolt, they were rather more cautious. There is, shall we say, a well-grounded mistrust. They know also of the abrupt departures from Somalia, the departure from Vietnam. They don't want to become boat people . . .

BARTIROMO: . . . many have long believed that peace in the Middle East would first have to come between the Arabs and the Israelis. Do you believe that instead peace in Jerusalem will come through Baghdad?

LEWIS: I believe that the peace between the Arabs and the Israelis will come after, not before. At the moment, the conflict is an extremely useful safety valve. It is the licensed grievance all over the Arab world. When they're angry and resentful and embittered, which they all have very good reason to be, for the most part, against their own governments, this provides a means of expressing it, which does no harm to their own governments. Before the invasion of Iraq, people were saying, "We have to settle the Palestine question first and then deal with Iraq." That sent a clear message to Saddam Hussein: Make sure they don't settle the Palestine question.

  posted by TS @ 07:24  
 

 
What Went Wrong With Lewis? 

I'm hypmotized by the semi-fall of a "wise man", or so was informally dubbed the great Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis. I know I shouldn't be surprised since it was learned, impressive men who gave us Marxism and Calvinism (not to in any way equate the two but still...).

From Michael Hirsh, an editor at Newsweek: 
Perhaps in the long run, you can't Islamicize democracy, and so Islam is simply standing in the way. 

Iran is the best real-world test of this hypothesis right now. A quarter century after the Khomeini revolution, Iran seems to be stuck in some indeterminate middle state. The forces of bottom-up secular democratic reform and top-down mullah control may be stalemated simply because there is no common ground whatsoever between their contending visions. That's one reason the Kemalist approach had its merits, Fouad Ajami argued in a recent appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think Ataturk understood that if you fall through Islam, you fall through a trap door. And in fact, I think the journey out of Islam that Ataturk did was brilliant. And to the extent that the Muslim world now has forgotten this. . .they will pay dearly for it.” 

But there is no Ataturk in Iraq (though of course Chalabi, and perhaps Allawi, would still love to play that role). For now, Sistani remains the most prestigious figure in the country, the only true kingmaker. Suspicions remain in the Bush administration that Sistani's long-term goal is to get the Americans out and the Koran in—in other words, to create another mullah state as in Iran. But those who know Sistani well say he is much smarter than that. Born in Iran—he moved to Iraq in the early 1950s, around the time Lewis saw the light—Sistani has experienced up close the failures of the Shiite mullah state next door. He and the other Shiites have also suffered the pointy end of Sunni Arab nationalism, having been oppressed under Saddam for decades, and they will never sanction a return to that. So Sistani knows the last, best alternative may be some kind of hybrid, a moderately religious, Shiite-dominated democracy, brokered and blessed by him and conceived with a nuanced federalism that will give the Kurds, Sunnis and others their due. But also a regime that, somewhat like the Iranian mullahs, uses its distinctive Islamic character, and concomitant anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, as ideological glue. For the Americans who went hopefully to war in Iraq, that option is pretty much all that's left on the table—something even Bernard Lewis may someday have to acknowledge. 
Full article here.

  posted by TS @ 07:10  
 

 
Fictional Monday

“Schedule my midlife crisis for March 21st, 2007,” Bernard Scully told his secretary on September 3rd, 2005. “No, I’m not kidding.”

Scully had long wanted a Mercedes both for the fine hood ornament and the thrill of German engineering, and thought that by fulfilling a desire and checking off one of the famous demands of a midlife crisis he could kill two birds with one stone. This was in character, for he had the reputation of exerting the sort of control over his life others dream of. His lists had lists, his plans had plans. It was a joke around the office that he’d scheduled his own circumcision. 

Toward the goal of becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation he read business books voraciously. There were the animal books: “Swimming with the Sharks” and “Taming the Tigers”. There were the etiquette minders: “Using Your Voice to Communicate Authority” and “How to Use Golf to (Pitching) Wedge Your Way to the Corporate Green”. 

His philosophy was that your main responsibility in life was to keep yourself happy because happy people don’t cause much trouble. They don’t throw red paint on people for wearing fur and don’t disrupt G-8 summits. They don't abuse their wives or take mind-altering drugs. They aren't extremists of any sort. 

Months passed and Scully continued making lists and consuming things in order to make him want to get up in the morning. On the morning of September 3rd his secretary knocked on office door. "It’s time for your mid-life crisis now. What’s it gonna be? Beach bum on Maui?" 

He smiled broadly. “Nope. Time for my first Mercedes-Benz.”

At the dealership he caressed the lines of the latest Cabriolet convertible and felt...nothing. He stared at the famous insignia, which looked like the ‘60s peace sign, but felt no peace, no happiness. It was just metal, he thought, morosely. Nothing but sheet metal and car parts that would rust and fill a landfill. 

This wasn't in his business books. 

“What kind of midlife crisis am I having?” he said to himself. Not even the thought of having an affair or becoming a beach bum lifted his funk. "Affair. Car. Dropping out. What else is there?"

A voice came: the crisis isn't what you haven't gotten, but what you haven't given.

  posted by TS @ 06:59  
 

 
Justice Not Served

It's always disheartening to listen to the female Cokie Roberts, who happens to be a political pundit & public Catholic. I identify her first by gender because it sometimes seems (am I being too male?) that anything that is good for women is good for society.

Her retrospective on Sandra Day O'Connor was, necessarily, a retrospective on the way she felt when Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female SCOTUS. And she positively beamed when another This Week panel member explained how O'Connor was the most powerful justice, as if "power" has now suddenly taken on the the same connotation as "good" or "wise". Oh sure, we all adore our ethnic groups and our gender identities more than things like ideas and principles. So whatever O'Connor espoused, the important thing is that she was a woman, nevermind that at least half of aborted children are females and that O'Connor helped foster its continuation.

Roberts and Gringrich then had a fascinating little exchange. Cokie said that women are more practical, they are good at helping others reach consensus. And Gringrich agreed, saying that O'Connor didn't interpret the American Constitution but interpreted the consensus of the American Zeitgeist. Gringrich said that most women want to figure out how they can meet their opponent half way, while most men want to know how they can beat their opponent. And he was pleased that we're now apparently free to recognize gender differences and Cokie was pleased that Gingrich agreed with her. As long as men are depicted as competitive ape-like figures, then sexual stereotyping is fine.

But I must've missed the news because I didn't know the job description of a SCOTUS changed. That it's now to determine the consensus of the American people instead of interpreting the Constitution. (Although I suppose it is progress that at least she attempted to judge by the opinion of the American people instead of judging by her personal opinion, the way most of the justices have over the past five decades.) The question in the end becomes when does the rule of law become rule-by-arbitrary-opinion? Bill Luse put it well: "It seems that the rule of men is now the rule of law".

  posted by TS @ 19:10  
July 4, 2005 

 
Various

I'd like to do a study* of the Psalms and the use of the word "blood". It's often used in the sense a desire to wash in the blood of his enemies...in one Psalm it's rendered "wash my feet in the blood of the wicked". This is interesting in light of how Paul said Christ was "made sin" for us, and how now in the New Covenant we, who are wicked, are washed in the blood of the Holy One. 
++

Our priest today had a sermon about how God is sovereign, in the sense of knowing & permitting, random events. Now that’s a real difficulty in a nutshell – moderns understand the randomness in a way ancients didn’t. The ancients didn't know of randomness and saw all events as a personal message from God. Moderns error on the other side by mistaking randomness as something apart from God, rather than something he sees and permits.
++

Abraham seemed to have his greatest test in the sacrifice of Isaac. And he lived years after, to a great old age. He was never tested again as severely. It occurred to me that it’s possible the time of our greatest testing is already behind us! At least we can hope. Just another reason not to borrow trouble.
++

St. Alphonsus tells us that we need to pray for our final perserverance daily not because God is checking off a daily prayer sheet in a desire to deny us final perserverance, but because He knows us so well, knows our single weakness which is to take Him for granted and forget His benefits. He knows well that we would grow complacent and that that which we do not seek with hunger is not appreciated.
* - I found twelve separate references to blood in the Psalms, subdivided into these categories:

Vengeance - 5
God desires Mercy, not Sacrifices - 2
Power of Innocent Blood - 4
Other - 1

  posted by TS @ 23:37  
July 1, 2005 

 
I've Gotta Be You

I was reading NRO’s list of recommended summer reads and I learned there was a new biography of C.S. Lewis. I went out to read the comments on Amazon and the gist of the new material is that C.S. Lewis drank a lot. Borderline alcoholic. But I think that’s yet another example of the historian’s mistake of judging the past by the standards of the present. Everyone drank like fish back then. Everyone was “borderline alcoholic”, at least by our present-day MADD-inspired standards. Which is just another indication of just how influenced we are by our society. That’s not to say we don’t have free will, but our behavior lives in a very cramped living space.

  posted by TS @ 23:23  
 

 
Around Town

NR's annual recommendations on beach reads.
~
Sharp pictures from the Saint Rose Priory in Springfield, KY. The "Sacred Heart at Dawn" one is exceptional.


~
John Miller on Shelby Foote's Southernness. "...if the New York Times were reviewing his book afresh this Sunday, he would be portrayed as a crank". Undoubtedly true.

  posted by TS @ 09:42  
 

 
Idiotology

My brother-in-law has been giddy after discovering scientology because it confirms his long held theory that "people are idiots" and Scientology appears to be exhibit A. (I've been lately giddy about the news that Justice Souter's hometown might be thinking of eminent domainin' his property, but that's another post.) Jesus put it in a kindler and gentler way by saying that people are sheep, and there's no question we are severely retarded compared to angels. The key is to find the right teachers and follow them. More on the wrong teachers here, here, and here.

  posted by TS @ 09:10  
 

 
To tune of David Bowie's "Ground Control":


Ground control to Major Tom, Ground control to Major Tom:
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground control to Major Tom: Commencing countdown engine's on
Check ig-nition and may L Ron be with you

This is ground control to Major Tom, you've really made the grade!
And soon you'll be a Thetan level VI,
Now it's time to leave the spaceship if you dare

This is Major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door
And I'm jumping on the couch in a most peculiar way 
And Lauer looks very different today

For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can't do

BRIDGE

Though I've spent eight hundred thousand dollars, I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go, 
tell my ex's I love them very much, they know

Ground control to Major Tom: 
Your circuit's off, there's something wrong.
Can you hear me Major Tom? 
Can you hear me Major Tom? 
Can you hear me Major Tom? 

  posted by TS @ 07:59  
 
 
    
 
 
Don't Go Out a Drinkin' With Text-Messaging On Your Mind

This Columbus Dispatch story warns against text-messaging and drinking:
Drinking and text-messaging don’t mix. Just ask Kiki Valdes, 24, a Miami artist. He still regrets sending under-the-influence text messages on his cell phone to a young woman he courted while in college...

The combination of technology and inebriation can be socially destructive, said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit group that studies the social effects of the Internet. 

‘‘You’re not looking anybody in the face," he said. ‘‘There is a social distancing that makes you say things you wouldn’t say to their face." 

Social scientists call it mechanomorphism: You get so used to communicating electronically that you start to treat people like, well, machines. Add alcohol to the mix and it can be embarrassing or even just plain mean. 

"With texts, we tend to be more abrupt. We tend to be terse and some people interpret that as being insulting," said Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute at the University of Georgia, who studies how college students use text messages. 

  posted by TS @ 19:02  
August 31, 2005 

 
The Blogroll Algorithm

From my Aquinas side comes the desire to systematize the unsystematizeable, so I've been trying to come up with a blogroll algorithm. At the risk of taking this whole blogging thing too seriously (oh why pretend, I've already gone down that road) here is a rough draft: 
If total points =
< 3: small chance 
3-4: moderate chance
4-5: excellent chance
> 5: no-brainer
1) I enjoy reading the blogger: 5 points
2) Blogger is effective at communicating a Catholic view of the world: 3 points
3) Blogger asks for a reciprocal link**: 5 points
4) Blogger links to me via a long list: 1 point
5) Blogger links to me on a short list: 3 points*
6) Blogger is doctrinally dangerous = -3 points

* -   Note: This shows an admirable lack of concern over what others think since they aren't embarrassed to be seen blatantly linking to this blog. There are snobs among St. Blog's and it's no surprise that not one of them links to this blog, though that could be circular reasoning on my part. :-) And in fairness snobs like reading other snobs, so one could say they come by their blogroll honestly and aren't necessarily involved in social climbing. 

** -   assuming reasonable content
__

The blogroll is by no means is complete (I just noticed today that I didn't link to Cowpi Journal despite being under the impression that all this time I had--I use bookmarks and not my own blog to hit links). And what complicates the algorithm is there are questions that apply only to one link - for example, I almost never read Mark Shea's blog (love his books!) and he doesn't link to me, so I had to add question 2 above to explain his linkage. Also I automatically link to anyone who asks since that's happened exactly once in this blog's history (not counting Mr. Viagra) -- hence question 3.

  posted by TS @ 18:47  
 

 
Recovery

Michelle Malkin has a thorough post on charitable efforts, including a list of charities bloggers are supporting. A good mix is Catholic Charities and the American Red Cross since the Red Cross serves immediate needs and Catholic Charities serves longer term needs:
While local agencies along the Gulf Coast anticipate that they will be provide some type of emergency assistance in their communities, Catholic Charities' niche in disaster relief is to provide long-term recovery work. In fact, Catholic Charities agencies in Florida are still providing services to help people recover from last year's devastating hurricanes. 
Also, just learned that EWTN's Raymond Arroyo lost his home & family restaurant.

  posted by TS @ 13:25  
 

 
Songs for a Wednesday

Tom has the Thomism blues, which inspired me to try to come up with a song for Thomists. First I was thinking along the lines of "What's the matter with Thomists? They're all right-" to the tune "What's the matter with Flintstone?". Then I thought why not play with the lyrics to Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man"? It looked easier on paper so here's only the first two lines:
Sometimes it's hard to be a Thomist
Reading the scholastics instead of Drudge...

  posted by TS @ 11:03  
 

 
You Can't Get There From Here



Given that the media exists in order to hype, it was only late last night that I started to believe just how bad this disaster is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the level of destruction suggests Katrina is going to be the worst storm since the turn of the last century, worse than even Hurricane Hugo or Andrew for example.

Last year, before a visit to the Big Easy, I recall reading this shudder-inducing scenerio of a hurricane slamming New Orleans. And while it's a relief it doesn't seem as bad as this article portended (it predicted thousands of lives lost) [Update: or maybe not], it seems to have missed the possibility of a levee breaking and water flooding via Lake Pontchatrain. Who would've thought that the worse problem would not be the hurricane itself but the levee breaking? (Though obviously the former was the cause of the latter.) 

As for Biloxi, it's hard to imagine them getting hit any worse. It was a Cat 4 and not Cat 5 storm but it feels academic at this point. Looking out at the extremely wet weather here in Central Ohio makes the storm is easy to personify; she has traveled eight hundred miles. It makes tangible our physical interconnectedness. 

Here's an excerpt from National Geographic's doomsday scenerio from a year ago:
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste...When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours—coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studying the coast... "I don't think people realize how precarious we are," Suhayda says, watching sailboats glide by. "Our technology is great when it works. But when it fails, it's going to make things much worse." 
UPDATE: I can not get my head around this. I can't get my head around a city being closed for a month (or longer). I can no more get my head around this than I could around the destruction wreaked by the terrorists after 9/11. It's too big. They say as you get older you lose some of your capacity for surprise since you have seen so much more, but I am just so surprised at seeing 80% New Orleans under water and hearing the words "New Orleans is closed".

  posted by TS @ 09:46  
 

 
Not Sure Whether to Laugh or Cry

I shouldn't laugh, but this is funny. RCIA itself, given its sad state at many parishes, might serve as both initiation and goodbye. (I speak from personal knowledge; a co-worker's relapse back into the Church was going well until the utter insensitivity of the leader of RCIA helped provoke a re-relapse.) 

Anyway, as for a ritualistic song of depature, I've always been partial to "Goodbye Ladies", the song we sing at family gatherings when someone is eliminated from a card game (substituting the person's name for 'ladies' of course).

  posted by TS @ 14:40  
August 30, 2005 

 
       

"And God Said, 'Play Ball: Amusing And Thought-provoking Parallels Between The Bible And Baseball'" - Gary Graf - from blog "People of the Book", listing the tenth best selling Catholic book

His wife, wearing a Bourbon Street T-shirt with a lewd message, interjected: "I just don't want to die in this shirt." - from AP story on Hurricane Katrina, via Dawn Eden

Do you remember your First Confession? I do...and despite everything the nuns and priests told me, I was scared! But afterward -- today I saw 10 kids seemingly float out of the confessional, eager as anything to fly to the Tabernacle and pray their penance. One little girl summed it up for me: "I'm so much lighter now!"... Yup. Sin's a heavy thing, a shackle that keeps one as enslaved as the Israelites in Egypt. Only reconcilation to Jesus -- via the Sacrament -- can set us free. - The Pew Lady

About Schmidt: Look, I grew up in Palo Alto, California, and go through a tin of flavored hummus a day, but the sneering condescension that pervades every shot in this film had me yelling to my friends about the elitist values of Hollywood on the way out of the theater. Oh, look at those poor people in Omaha with their bleak, meaningless lives. I've heard people talk about how sympathetic this movie was, but is there one character who isn't presented as either an asshole or a desperate loser? - emailer quoted on Terry Teachout's blog. Teachout's co-blogger comments: "I was fully prepared to like Schmidt. I loathed it...And yet I suspect that the tonal difference between this film and Election was a matter of millimeters—millimeters that just happened to fall across some crucial line separating lampoon from contempt."

During the recent sex abuse scandals, many were amazed to discover that the bishops – advised by the science of professional psychology – believed predatory gay sex with teenagers was a curable disease. Today, we shake our heads and opine wisely, “That kind of activity is incurable, you know.” Actually, we are wrong and the bishops were right. While it may well be true that modern science finds pedophiliacs and predatory gays incurable, it is not the case that pedophilia or homosexuality are incurable. They can be cured, they just can’t be cured with the tools of modern science. The bishops’ error lay not in thinking these conditions curable, but in thinking the cure lay in modern science. It didn’t. - Steve of "Fifth Column"

The reason why we sometimes see beauty as a detraction from God is because of pride and conscupiscience. The reason why we don't see the radiance of being or, the splendor of value is because we have made ourselves and our pleasure the existential center rather than God. That is why some may rather read a good theological book rather than being with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. If we give each value its proper value-response, we should recognize its splendor the way it is intended. Since God is the source of all values, we must give Him admiration and reverence, the mother of all virtues. - commenter on Disputations

According to Martin Luther, faith alone saves. In his sermons, he insisted that we can commit adultery one hundred times a day and still be saved, as long as we had faith...But that’s just bad theology. Faith doesn’t save, marriage saves. Faith is a product of marriage. Faith comes from trusting the Bridegroom and remaining faithful to Him. Faithful living is what you do after you take the vows. - Steve of "Fifth Column"

We live in the shadows of bad mid-century exegesis, which was divorced from both traditional commentaries on Scripture and the rule of faith, but well-versed in the past two centuries' philological advances and the findings of comparative near Eastern studies. A typical feature of modernist exegesis is premature imputation of sinful motivations when they are not there. This tendency is the pendulum swinging the other way in reaction to the opposite tendency in 18th & 19th century traditional exegesis: namely, the tendency to gloss over the sinfulness of the holier figures in Scripture, and to stretch these pietistic interpretations beyond textual warrant...It's part of the reason why reading the New Jerome Bible Commentary can be as factually enlightening as it is dogmatically sterile...So often, a morally superior reading is neglected because it is often more difficult or slightly more obscure, and the hearty bread of the Word of God is watered down into porridge. - Old Oligarch

[That] brings to mind a source of growing irritation for me: the talk of grace being “free.” For one thing, when evangelicals use it it often sounds like a sales pitch (”… and the best part of it is, it’s all absolutely FREE!”). But more importantly, it isn’t really true. Grace is a free gift, see, but you have to choose to receive it, which means giving over your life, your possessions, and everything else to God. It might even mean martyrdom. It might be worth the cost, but it’s not like it doesn’t cost anything. It has already cost me some things. When I think it over though, the problem might be in interpreting the word “grace”, which comes from Latin gratia, meaning “gift.” Gifts are free in the sense that you don’t pay money for them; but they aren’t free in the sense of a “free lunch” or “something for nothing.” Think of the context which gifts occur. A date gives you flowers. A dinner guest gives you a bottle of wine. Your mother gives you a Christmas present. Your estranged spouse gives you a peace offering. All of these people are giving in the sense that they don’t demand payment, but it doesn’t mean they don’t want anything. They want to have a relationship with you. And relationships, as we know, have costs. - Camassia 

My mouth is watering after reading this description of Mark Shea's book about the Blessed Virgin. Secret Agent Man has been helping edit the book and asks for our prayers. Go see why this book is so interesting and I'll just stay here and get those prayers started. - Julie of "Happy Catholic"

It will be my second real Fall, far from the autumn of California "where the leaves fall not - land of my people forever." At Christendom there is a different aspect of Elvendom to be found. Soon I will be walking through the dark towards a star of fire tangled in the trees like the solitary lamp in a dark church, and between the falling leaves I will discern notes and spectral voices. When I reach the clearing, though, this forbidding air of Faërie will disperse, and there will be Peachy with his concertina and Sheila with her tin whistle and, if she can be summoned, Christina with her harp that the wind plays when she's not looking, that breathes inanimate music and reveals the architecture of the air. In Christina's hands that harp becomes a tower full of bells, or a wheel spinning thread out of flame. When the song ends a bodhran will strike up a running rhythm in the shadows, and my violin will turn fiddle and dance a reel instead of a minuet. And then there will be the singing of a score of voices while the sparks shoot starward. Let 'The Four Green Fields' be sung, and 'The Black Velvet Band'... - Meredith of "Basia Me, Catholica Sum"

  posted by TS @ 08:05  
 

 
In the Unlikely Event...

..that anyone reads this blog & not Flos Carmeli, then check out Steven's write up on Brad Paisley. Nice to see I'm not the only one to appreciate Paisley's blend of humor and spirituality. And speaking of country music, I cringe when I hear that Alan Jackson line about not knowing the "difference between Iraq & Iran" because I fear that neither will the rest of us eventually.

  posted by TS @ 21:56  
August 29, 2005 

 
Finally!

Someone with more books than Steven Riddle, who guestimates 20,000. Scott Hahn has about 50,000. Sorry Steven.

And don't worry, I'm not using that as an excuse to buy another book.

"It's just an exhibition, not a competition. Please no wagering."- David Letterman
Update: From Smock Mama via email: "my hubby says that to the intellectual the size of one's personal library is akin to the size of one's personal anatomy for nascar aficionados."

  posted by TS @ 13:38  
 

 
The '60s Were Great   ...for about ten minutes?

One thing that interests me about the '60s is how the decade brought improvements artistic and moral but both lasted for about as long as free Guinness would at an Irish festival. It reminds me how I was very skinny as a youth and then I gained poundage and for all of ten minutes at the age of 21 I was at my ideal weight. 

Some of the folk music, such as Bob Dylan's stuff, was an improvement over "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" (which I understand was a big hit). And politically speaking, who wouldn't take the '60s Martin Luther King over the '50s Gov. Wallace? But it's stunning how quickly openness and vulnerability morphed into exploitation and decadence. Martin Luther King gave way to Malcolm X and then worse. Bob Dylan gave way to acid-dropping rockers and then worse.

It might be a stretch to suggest a parallel in the Church but perhaps Vatican II showed a similar cycle: an improvement, an openness, but one that was quickly exploited and debased during the late '60s and early '70s. And eventually perfectly upstanding words like peace, justice, and openness became tainted by association.

  posted by TS @ 08:42  
 

 
Something We Agree On...

Nice write-up on Pope St. Pius X from Karen of "From The Anchor Hold".

Update: Last night I was reading "Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes" by the respected Eamon Duffy and, not surprisingly, he was underwhelmed with Pope St. Pius X, who was more interested in pastoring than in making intellectuals happy, though it seems to me that you don't serve anyone well if you suppress the truth. And Duffy was particularly critical that the Pope was unhappy with those who ascribed the authorship of the Pentatuech to anyone other than Moses. 

After reading that critical biography of Pius, perhaps I'll dip into this.

  posted by TS @ 08:27  
 

 
Reconciling Cross and Gospel

From Fr. Bloomfield:


Is this [our Crosses] the Good News of the Gospel? We’re just meant to bear these Crosses until they finally kill us? NO! Christ bears these Crosses with us; He holds us up, and supports us, and ultimately makes these burdens sources of grace and life. How do we do this, though? How are we meant to bear these Crosses, when we don’t have the strength on our own?

The real Good News is that Christ desires these burdens for Himself. Don’t hold in the weight of the Cross; cast it upon Jesus in love and in humility. By daily offering to Him the Crosses of our life, we grow in love of God and neighbor. Three ways stand out as excellent means to “offer up” the Crosses that we bear...[here]

  posted by TS @ 20:57  
August 28, 2005 

 
Blog Lightning Round

      - unedited thoughts at a fast clip


Water under the sun, even in a blow-up pool, looks good.


Overhead by a fellow parishioner: “If this is a Baptism, where’s the baby?” (It later became apparent an adult was being baptized.)


“Sola Scriptura” is a Latin phrase. 


I'm a sucker for Augustine/Aquinas comparisons.


Thomas More’s wife in the movie “A Man for All Seasons”: “You’ve done all that God could reasonably want.” Thomas replies, “Love asks more than reason” (or words to that effect).


To Be Resolved: There is nothing more civilized than enjoying a cup of coffee while reading the paper on a summer morning on your back porch. 


Freshman year of college you couldn’t go a weekend without hearing the Beatles’ album with the song “All You Need Is Love”. To play it now feels a sort of treason, as if to water down its association.


The end of a vacation is the end of "irrational exuberance" in Greenspan's language and it’s appropriate it shares the end of August. Summer bears a disproportionate burden and I’m always pleasantly surprised when she delivers. The splendor of that twenty-mile bike ride through flea-speck Amlin, Ohio has resonance. As does the long hike through eighteen sun-drenched holes at Tartan.


Exercise is good, but futile in creating the "new worlds" that book, film & prayer engender and which shock one into a humility born of wonder.


Sweet memory is my wife and I “stepping out” on Saturday morning and bringing home Perkins instead of a McDonald’s breakfast. She laughed when I reported that the sign outside Perkins says “World’s Greatest French Toast” as if I my credulity was proof of my being too suspectible to advertising. The pancakes are only “world famous”, a step down. Both were good but the omelet was even better. Yum.


Went to St. Margaret's church festival and heard the band perform AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” which caused an inward cringe. It’s harder for me to treat songs as completely innocuous, for whatever reason. (Call it Puritanism or growth).


Does Katrina & The Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine” really count as rock music Rad Trads would disapprove? [Update: Written before I heard about the hurricane Katrina. No joke intended.]


Best hip-hop song ever is Pray by MC Hammer


When my stepson was thinking of making a career change into the military, his evangelical pastor offered to fast in addition to his prayers. Humbling. “I don’t have the gift of fasting,” joked a family member but I suspect that might be the point. 
UPDATE on song "Walking on Sunshine": "That song was actually covered by the Christian ska band The Insyderz, who started out as Salvation Army missionaries in Detroit. The song was crying out for a ska/punk cover, and it works pretty well for Christian bands, being about how much the singer loves their significant other (with God generally being considered pretty significant)." - Robert of Hokie Pundit

  posted by TS @ 16:05 
 
 

 
Moving the Church

I mentioned last week how the author Garry Wills said that the Church is moved by saints, hinting that some of the problems he has with the Magisterium will only be overcome when a saint comes along (I'm guessing he wasn't among those chanting "sainthood now!" after the death of Pope John Paul II).

What he says is true to some extent. A progressive Catholic in our diocesan newspaper said as much, pointing out how theologians are always disrespected until they are honored. The classic example is St. Thomas Aquinas, who sniffed of heresy until after his death. There are also theologians like Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar were persona non grata until they were suddenly invited to Vatican II and treated with much respect. So yes, that's the way things work.

But - and it's a large one - you don't know which theologies are authentic in real time, unless the Church speaks. Many think they know and many place their opinions above the Church's anyway so it's not an issue. But one cannot know. And to be in the dark is a cross to bear, perhaps not the heaviest one, but one nonetheless. The temptation is to want to be ahead of Revelation.

What is also interesting to me is that Garry Wills seems to be making a truth claim in favor of the Catholic Church (an unlikely position for him to be in) when he says that saints move the Church. Because if we take the larger perspective, we find that you don't have to holy to move Christianity. One of the seminal figures in Christian history was Martin Luther, and even most Lutherans wouldn't think of him as particularly holy or saintly. Certainly the fact that his first bible translation excluded the book of James implies that he felt himself not only above the Church but above Scripture, which means that - inadvertently, of course - he was putting the Catholic Church on par with Scripture by treating parts of both as worthy of rejection.

  posted by TS @ 11:51  
 

 
Latest George Strait Country Song:


Hope is an anchor and love is a ship, time is the ocean and life is a trip
You don't know where you're going, ‘till you know where you're at
And if you can't read the stars, well you better have a map
A compass and a conscience, so you don’t get lost at sea
Or on some lonely island, where no one wants to be

From the beginning of creation, I think our maker had a plan
For us to leave these shores and sail beyond the sand
And let the good light guide us through the waves and the wind
To the beaches in a world where we have never been
And we'll climb up on a mountain, y'all we'll let our voices ring
Those who've never tried it, they'll be the first to sing

- latest George Strait song, with the lyric "I ain’t never seen a hearse / with a luggage rack"

  posted by TS @ 11:49  
 

 
Why Do I Torture Myself ... 

...by watching This Week's Bad News With George Stephanopoulos?

The legs this Cindy Sheehan story has is inexplicable, as inexplicable as the legs the Swiftboat story had during the presidential campaign. I suppose the left has found its answer to MADD, only it's been rechristened as: "Mothers Against Their Sons Enlisting In The Army And Getting Killed, Especially If They Don't Like the Commander-In-Chief".

But I digress. I wanted to share this bon mot from fellow Catholic Cokie Roberts: "...even the Pope, who is not known as particularly friendly to women...". (It's always family members that hurt the worst ain't it?) And here I had no idea the pope was a misogynist! Why the heck did the College of Cardinals elect a pope who isn't friendly to half the human race? There's an outrage for you.

Roberts went on to explain that the big problem with the RU-486 pill is that poor women won't have access to it until it's widely available, which means poor women will not have an equal opportunity to sin.

Like I said, I'm a glutton for punishment sometimes. /rant

  posted by TS @ 11:48  
 

 
Violence in the Bible

I cheated on my blog by commenting elsewhere on violence in the Old Testament so here's a recap. 

A great mystery is why the Flood: Why would God kill his people? Perhaps to get through to us the message of His sovereignty. Perhaps as an example to teach us how bad sin is. (Most of us tend to look upon physical violence with horror while looking on moral violence (i.e. sin) with precious little horror; centuries ago people were more concerned about moral health than physical, so we naturally consider them barbarians.) To me, it's much more interesting to me whether these people went to Heaven or not, than why God killed them. 

Violence is not unique to the OT of course. In the chapter 5 of Acts Ananias and Saphira were killed because they were holding back money from the community. And personally I don't think it's tragic UNLESS they went to Hell. That is what is unimaginable. And St. Augustine thinks they didn't. From Orchard's Commentary: 
"The grave punishment was exemplary, to show the respect due to the Church, and preserve discipline, both so necessary for the persecuted infant community. Ananias and Saphira had received the Holy Spirit and many graces, 'yet it is to be believed that after this life God spared them, for his mercy is great'. (St. Aug. Sermon. 148)

  posted by TS @ 11:06  
 

 
Motiveless

He loves us not
that we might love Him
for being Love itself
he comes by it honestly.

  posted by TS @ 23:31  
August 27, 2005 

 
Dialogue from the film A Man For All Seaons

In the movie, the servant Matthew would seem to have little to offer the brilliant Thomas More, as we would have far less to offer Christ. But see this marvelous exchange:
Sir Thomas More: "I shall miss you Matthew."

His servant Matthew: "Oh no sir, you see through me, I know that."

More: "I - shall - miss - you."

[Later, Matthew to his wife]: "Miss me? What's in me for him to miss!?"

Later, Sir Thomas upon being seen as too lawyerly in trying to escape the snares of his enemies says:
God made the angels to show Him splendor, as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity, but man he made him to give Him wittily the tangle of his mind...It's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.

  posted by TS @ 12:14  
 

 
Regional Differences

I was listening to travel writer William Least Heat Moon on C-Span's In Depth and he said that despite the fact that so many U.S. cities look almost identical (i.e. McDonald's on every corner, Walmarts, etc...) they retain remarkable diversity in terms of the people.

That's been true in my micro experience, in my move between Cincinnati and Columbus, two Ohio cities a scant hundred miles apart. You might think that all large Ohio cities within a hundred miles of each other would be alike but you'd be wrong. I imagined Columbus a "Cincinnati North" but there are a thousand little differences, some trivial but some enough to give the places a very different feel. 

One difference is that the ice cream man that comes around in Columbus is not Mr. Softee, and he plays a horrible tune which I've blocked out due to PTES (Post Traumatic Earworm Syndrome). When I see the ugly Columbus version of an ice cream truck my aesthetic sensibilities are offended. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

        

The real thing -- I always pine for my youth when I see cheap imitators. Note the elegant design, the large amount of white space, the artistic Mr. Softee icon. Can you say c-l-a-s-s?

There are also differences political, religious, visual and social which some might argue are more important than ice cream truck varieties. I grew up in the most conservative county in Ohio, one that gave Bill Clinton only twelve votes (I jest, but only slightly). I now live in a county that can't make up its mind between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. Religiously, there are twice as many Catholics per capita in the Cincy area as Columbus. Geographically, Cincinnati has a lot of hills while Columbus is as flat as a dollar bill. 

Columbus is startlingly mild-mannered compared to Cincy (which to anyone on the east coast will sound hard to believe, like saying that Mississippi is hotter than Texas in the summer). The difference is most obvious in Cincy's radio talk show hosts who wallow in controversy and aren't afraid to offend, compared to Columbus's, who avoid offense like the plague.

  posted by TS @ 17:43  
August 26, 2005 

 
Minding The Mysteries

I found this messianic passage from Tobit a spur to try to concentrate on the mysteries on the rosary more strenuously, seeing prosperity as the Glorious Mysteries and the chastisements as the Sorrowful ones: 
Happy are those who love You,
and happy are those who rejoice in Your prosperity.

Happy are all the men who shall grieve over You,
over all Your chastisements. -Tobit 13

  posted by TS @ 17:30  
 

 
March of the Penguins

Saw the National Geographic documentary “March of the Penguins” and arguably ne’er a harder life has any animal. The emperor penguins of the Antarctic have their arduous way of survival down pat, but one that involves the males losing half their weight by going four months without food and the females taking frequent fifty mile hikes in fifty-degree-below-zero weather. The thought occurs: There’s gotta be an easier way. But they’d rather fight than switch, so they remain in that unforgiving environment, huddled against the cold, taking turns being in the center where the warm thirty-degree-below-zero “heat” is. And all in order to bear baby penguins. It was an inspiring film from the standpoint of overcoming obstacles and community cooperation. But mostly it was inspiring to see the warming notion of self-sacrifice. 

It was interesting to note how the baby penguins go from babies to adults. They spend the first year of their life warmed and fed by their mother and father. But then both parents leave and for four years the babies grow up together in the ocean waters, seemingly oblivious to care. No long hikes in the bitter cold like their parents, no long periods without food. No, these difficulties are only encountered in the raising of little penguins. Then, like a switch, they begin the difficult life of adults. Apparently without complaint. And I was impressed by the fact that so many of us human beings have a lot to learn from these penguins who are so willing to gallantly sacrifice themselves for children.

  posted by TS @ 17:20  
 

 
Which Mary? 

The Word Among Us on Monday's feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary featured an interesting quote from the late Pope John Paul II: 
"Far from creating distance between her and us, Mary's glorious state brings about a continuous and caring closeness."
Which Mary do you think of when you think of the Blessed Mother? Do you think of the quiet virgin who gave birth but who otherwise seemed almost ordinary, someone who never drew attention to herself and lived so modestly? Or do you think of the Mary in her glorified body, the Mary crowned in Heaven, the Immaculate Conception, the Mary of the apparations? 

It may be hard to connect these "two Marys" but I think it may also be difficult to connect ourselves and those we know now with how we'll be in Heaven, since the difference between our present sinfulness and our glorification is surely great.

The queenship of Mary is difficult for some non-Catholics to accept but perhaps there's a rough analogy in the film Lord of the Rings. At the very end, all of "Heaven" cheers and honors the hobbit Frodo, not because of Frodo's amazing powers but because when given great responsibility he made the right choices. No one worships Frodo, knowing with Gandalf lay the power, but nonetheless there was remarkable recognition and gratefulness expressed towards him by the entire community.

  posted by TS @ 17:31  
August 25, 2005 

 
Finding Miss Luse

Well I had the pleasure of meeting one Bernadette Luse today, daughter of the Professor, in somewhat less than ideal circumstances: She had a difficult round of golf, ending five over. But she was a professional and cordial despite it. We both agreed we'd wished Bill was here. 

The day started with an unusual celestial event - the sun was in the eastern part of the sky. And instead of moving downward into the horizon, it slowly went up! Amazing. Can you tell I'm not a morning person?

After a long walk from the parking lot I saw a sign saying that cellphones and cameras are strictly verboten during the tournament days, e.g. Thurs-Sat. (This was a twofer as I was double-barrelled.) I turned off the cell phone and only got the camera out for very long shots, which is why the photo below looks like it was taken from the Goodyear blimp:


Bern's in a red skirt, to the right of a sign indicating their score 

It all started where golf rounds usually do - hole numero uno. I found myself in a gallery of one, so when Bern whispered something to her caddy causing him to quickly looked over his shoulder at me, I figured it was something like "there's that blogger my dad told me to watch out for." My goal was to keep a low profile and not be a distraction to her until after 18 holes. 

I was amazed to find that their drives on number 1 were all within a few feet of each other. Never happens when I play, where after teeing off our group scatters to the four winds of the fairway (and surrounding highway). 

She had by far the prettiest swing of her threesome, which included an Aussie named Shani Waugh and another golfer named Kate Golden. Waugh had a really interesting putting motion - she holds her left hand in a fist way up on the handle. Wierd. But effective. Golden was especially golden - when Bernadette was trying to putt on 16 someone in the grandstand was making noise and Kate looked at them and held her hands up as if to say, "shut up!". 

I made eye contact with Bern after hole 3 and she gave me the sweetest smile. I looked away, guilty that I'd caused a distraction. The difference between her game face and when she smiles demonstrates an impressive mobility of expression. 
After a tough round...the real Miss Luse So the holes went by and things were mostly under control until around 16, before which she was always only 1 or 2 over. But then as the putts went errant late in the day I began to wonder what I'd say. It's kind of awkward because you can't say "nice round" and "you'll do better tomorrow" sounds condescending.

I made my own faux paus on 17 when I trudged up the hill, head down, to where they were teeing off. I finally lift my head and everyone, including the golf pros, are telling me to freeze since one of them was trying to tee off. Oops.

After the match she disappeared into a little tent for about three or four minutes and then came out and I introduced myself and told her I was her number one fan in Ohio. Pretty cheesey, I know.

 



 

 

Excellent weather

  posted by TS @ 13:15  
 

 
Missing Miss Luse




Well I'm a sucker for undercover blog reporting situations and when the LPGA coincided with my vacation week at home (the latter is always 53 weeks from the previous one for reasons I won't bore you with) I knew I'd be scoping out the scene, if only for blog fodder. Which is not a particularly good reason of course. I'm becoming something of a blogslut. Any time you alter your vacation plans one iota for your blog then you know you're in trouble. Documenting experiences tends to distort experiences, which is why so many people take a vacation less for the trip than to look at the pictures when they get home. 

But I digress...I wouldn't miss her in the tournament of course, but today seemed a long shot as far as meeting Miss Luse. The word on the street was that you might meet a pro on the practice hole or the putting green and it was a pluperfect sunny day. (I was thinking that these pros will never realize how rare these kind of days are in Central Ohio.) 

I felt a bit self-conscious arriving alone in this golf mecca not far from Jack Nicholas's Muirfield. Old money can sniff out no money, so I had no illusions that my carefully selected Izod golf-ish shirt was going to fool anybody. But I wanted a fighting a chance. Lacking a proper golf visor, I went with my Tennessee Vols cap. After the walk from the parking lot I slunk up to the putting green in front of the well-appointed Clubhouse. Watching the girls, I felt like a stalker. I surely fit the profile: unshaven white male mid-to-upper 30s (I like to gild my profile's lily), here in the middle of the week when most white males mid-to-upper 30s are working. And since I'm in favor of profiling I didn't have a problem with it. Yes I am mostly likely to be a stalker - I don't want my Grandma being looked at suspiciously by security guards. It didn't help that I was carrying a camera and walkman in my pockets, which made me look like I was packing heat or glad to see them. Or both.


This one's for Bob. Eat your heart out! 

I wandered to and fro through the Clubhouse to the first hole to the putting green. And then it suddenly occurred to me: I don't know that I'd know her if I saw her! I've only seen one good picture of her face, the one on the LPGA website, and I've found that as I age all attractive young women are beginning to look the same. When I was a attractive young man there seemed to be large variation in looks, but now anybody under the age of [redacted due to the possibility of older readers reading this] looks darn good.

I'm sure meeting her father's middle-aged blogging buddy is not high on her list of things she'd like to do. I missed her today, but that only builds the anticipation. Wouldn't Ahab have been disappointed if he'd found the whale immediately? (Not to suggest any similarity of course. And I do find that sentiment much less applicable to God, Who I'd prefer to meet immediately if not sooner.) Here are some pics for your viewing entertainment. Maybe I got a picture of Bern inadvertently:


Bern Lookalikes, Fooling the Eye


Not Bern either  


Nope!

  posted by TS @ 16:01  
August 24, 2005 

 
Titanic Display

   

The Titanic exhibit here in Columbus was packed with people. There is something about it that has captured imaginations in way other tragedies haven't. My mother asked why should that be.

I think it was mostly the tremendous loss of life though part of it is also the way it seemed almost fated. So many little things went wrong that it makes us play the "what if" games. What if the Titanic had hit the iceberg straight on (it would not have sank). What if the lookouts hadn't misplaced the binoculars? (They probably would've seen the iceberg earlier and avoided it). There are dozens more examples. There was even another ship in the area that might've come and saved over a thousand souls but for another 'what if'.

It also seemed a potent symbol. Western society was proud of her technological innovations and for many it seemed that science, not God, was the ticket to prosperity. Science was an unalloyed good (this was before the invention of the atomic bomb), and if you squinted your eyes hard enough it seemed mankind was progressing. (Two world wars and the Hitler & Stalin regimes woke most up to the fact that human nature wasn't progressing as quickly as science.) The Titanic was billed as the "unsinkable ship", which made it almost a poster child for that time's hubris. 

The Titanic was also a luxury liner. One Christian who survived wrote something that shows the difference in attitude between today's Christians, who are very comfortable with pleasure and comfort to the point of some evangelists advertising a "health & wealth gospel", and those of yesteryear. Back then, closer to America's Puritan roots, they were far more suspicious: 
"The pleasure and comfort which all of us enjoyed upon this floating palace, with its extraordinary provisions for such purposes, seemed an ominous feature to many of us, including myself, who felt it almost too good to last without some terrible retribution inflicted by the hand of an angry omnipotence."
The exhibit included picture & text concerning a Catholic priest who was traveling in order to officiate at his brother's wedding. And it was one of these last minute change of ship deals - a "what if" of tragic proportions. I thought only of how sad that wedding must've been (though it was surely delayed). But then I read how the priest comforted many souls as the ship went down and led an impromptu interdenominational prayer service. And it occurred to me that it was great that there was a priest on board, that maybe the "bad luck" the priest had had in transferring at the last minute to the Titanic was instead providential.

  posted by TS @ 07:52  
 

 
Journal du Jour





It’s odd to feel rich.

But the sun makes it so, for there’s not a millionaire in southern California with so much beauty in front of him right now.

My wife’s landscaping skills have borne a rich harvest, a sweet profusion of yellows and purples beside a fountain constantly replenishing itself under a sunsational sky with a rock star sun, the sky a tingle blue, the tangle of greens around a grotto of stones, the water cascading from level to level to level. The wind hits the poplars and they glint a thousand times, their leaves signatories of glories, white-hot suitors of surrounding greens. 

The ash looks like a stevedore, soliciting and shapely, reminding me of Hillerich & Bradsby’s finest. The cornflowers are bound with string to keep them from straying wildly. They look stiff, like wallflowers at a party. But then the shell shock of sun on skin and leaf and light lit of radiance falls from the sky on them and me and they look so...happy. If nature is an elaborate parable then what does it say that so many completely different environments shed so much beauty? Rain forests and deserts, mountains and plains – all unquenchably beautiful.

  posted by TS @ 12:42  
August 23, 2005 

 
       

Beauty is experienced as a pleasurable good, as something that is pleasant to experience, as something that satisfies the appetite. But we often misapprehend a pleasurable good as a useful good, as something that is good because it lets us acquire some further good. We don't always recognize, for instance, that looking at the physical beauty of another person ought to suffice; the pleasure of apprehending a beautiful human body is itself the good we are apprehending, not the opportunity to use the beauty of the body to obtain some other, carnal good. This idea is at least consistent with the fact that so many people find the beauty of nature conducive to contemplation in a way the beauty of other people is not. In general, the sight of a green tree against a blue sky is not perceived as the means to some other good. - Tom of Disputations

I once attended an open forum facilitated by someone who, for better or worse, had been put in charge of Catholic Ministry to Young Adults in the diocese of Wellington. At one point in the evening, he asked everyone what we thought the Church could offer to young people. When my turn came, I said: "Old people."

...(Haven't they noticed that hundreds of thousands of youth are gathering in Cologne right now, ready to rock with an old man in his seventies? People, get a clue . . .) - Sancta Sanctis (do go read the whole post)

After reading various efforts in recent months of blog-poetry, I debut with my own poem - written at least 25 years ago. My 10th grade English teacher thought it had more depth than I had. I had scribbled to complete an assignment as the teacher walked in the room. It is a Haiku:
The balancing branch
It may fall when I pass by
Think I'll take my chanc's 
---J Curley of Bethune Catholic

On one of the days, we used this song, brilliantly composed by Jessica (with a little help from her friends) to the tune of "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)," and sung by Holly ten (yes, ten) times, as the kids moved through the Learning Centers. Enjoy!
"When he was born, well his mother knew he’d be
Yeah he’d be the one who defended the truth
And she raised him, yes she raised him up to be
A good Christian like good mothers try to do.

But Augustine, didn’t like theology
He liked to drink and party all the long day through
And if you struggle with sins of impurity
St. Augustine’d be the role model for you

But his mother prayed 500 times
And then she prayed 500 more
So he’d be the man who laid 1000 sins
all down at Heaven’s door...

Well Augustine, he wrote many useful things
Telling all the faithful Catholics what to do.
“You are great Lord, and greatly to be praised,
Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you.”

Because his mother prayed 500 hours
And then she prayed 500 more
So he’d be the man who laid 1000 sins
all down at Heaven’s door

--Emily of "Holy Whapping"

The "total war" state is a fiction created by the defenders of total to explain why they too must be as dirty as those they fight. When I see newsreels of freaky Muslims burning American flags and chanting in some strange Arab jive about the "Great Satan" I think, "Dude, those people suck." But the fact that people suck, or their parents suck, or their children suck, does not render them combatants. - commenter Loudon on Amy's blog

'Nobody can prove the existence of God - otherwise faith would be meaningless' ...stands in direct contradiction to the doctrine of the Catholic Church: "1. If anyone says that: the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema." -- Zippy refuting a commenter on Amy's blog

Nota Bene: I know perfectly well what is meant by "the Christ of faith" and "the Jesus of history". I have staked the purpose of my life, my very existence, on the proposition that the two are identical. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. - Patrick of Orthonormal Basis

If, as the headline writer interprets him, he means displaying crucifixes, before we get to government buildings, I'd suggest we start with our church at St. Al's....In practice, we have a crucifix on Good Friday, and the rest of the year Jesus and the Amazing Liturgical Color Dreamcoat. - Terrence Berres

I have always wanted to be one of those clean desk people...But this desk? It's fallen prey to the forces that infest every flat surface in my house: Horizontal Magnetization. No matter how I struggle, my flat surfaces become immediately stacked up with stuff. - MamaT of Summa Mamas

"I am happy to be with them, to confirm their faith and to enliven their hope," [the Pope] added. That statement is striking, and an answer to those who fret about celebrity worship and wonder why the Pope-focus. He knows why he's there. - Amy Welborn

  posted by TS @ 12:21  
 

 
Pope St. Pius X - August 21

Yesterday was the feast of one of the more fascinating saints of the last century: Pope St. Pius X. A highly educated anti-Modernist, he was a champion of the common man. He once reacted to news of a modernist critic with a smile, saying, "Come, did he not allow that after all I was a good priest? Now, of all praise, that is the only one I have ever valued." He also once said that the elite were "abounding in wisdom of the world yet utterly reckless and foolish in matters of religion" which seems a characterization that gave them the benefit of the doubt.

It's heartbreaking to read of how impotent even a saint and the pontiff of nearly a billion Catholics was/is against the world; all his efforts to prevent what would become World War I were for naught; he died suddenly a few weeks after the outbreak. It literally broke his heart. And yet the knowledge of his helplessness is an impetus to working with our current Holy Father, who faces a similar seemingly hopeless cause in trying to reverse Western Christianity's spiritual decline.

I was watching the progressively misguided Garry Wills on C-Span's "In Depth" a week or two ago and he said something most of us would agree with. He said that the only way to move the church is the witness of a saint, which makes a kind of sense because sanctity carries with it a kind of authority. (Which also reminds me how ill-advised the Anglican church was in choosing to elect a gay bishop who had ditched his wife and children for his male lover; doesn't exactly inspire confidence.) So Wills hinted that it would take a saint to allow gay marriage, woman priests, and presumably abortion on demand. But what was interesting is that works both ways. And the only papal saint of modern times was somewhat of a "backward-looker" in the eyes of the world. Sometimes it takes a saint to recover what was lost?

Perhaps St. Pius might be termed a Traditionalist today but without a hint of the awful "New Oxford Review" about him. He was surprisingly non-rigorist considering the reputation of the ultra-orthodox - he opened up Communion to all children from the age of reason on and he encouraged frequent, even daily, Communion. He also promulgated use of the Vulgate and my first reaction was a but - but that doesn't reflect the latest manuscripts and Scripture scholarship (although admittedly St. Jerome had access to manuscripts we don't have). But he was always a pastor first and an academic second and there's something godlike in that because God Himself is pastor first which I think was shown in the Old Testament, where He condescends and is willing to use the imperfect instrument as a conduit to the better.

Finally, since I'm a nut for incorruptibility, the following is taken from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia:
On 19 May 1944, Pope Pius X's coffin was exhumed and was taken to the Chapel of the Holy Crucifix in St. Peter's Basilica for the canonical examination. Upon opening the coffin, the examiners found the body of Pius X completely preserved, despite the fact that he had died 30 years before and was not embalmed.

  posted by TS @ 19:57  
August 22, 2005 

 
A Short History of STG

STG began as a humble one-man operation and has expanded into teams of researchers combing millions of blogs for quotable quotes. Nah, it's still a humble one man operation.

I come by it honestly, the desire to cull quotes is apparently inbred. I still own an index card file full with quotes culled & pasted from newspapers or magazines. (Effect hoary old man voice) - that's what we used to do when I was a kid, back before the Internet. 

My great-great grandfather Milligan left his children a valuable collection of postage stamps as well as large books of hand-written quotes; the kids fought over the stamps except for my great grandfather who went with the quotes. I'm poor for this reason. (This paragraph is fictional.)

Wayne Gretzky says you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take and I miss 100% of the posts I don't read so don't hesitate to send nominations for STG inclusion, though publication is not guaranteed.

Fine Print: STG not available in Oregon.

UPDATE: "You're more than just STG to us, Tom! - Mary at St. Blog's Parish Hall .. Isn't she sweet?

  posted by TS @ 08:39  
August 21, 2005 

 
Introducing...

~ Calvinist Magazine! ~      Summer 2005 | 8.1

   ....the ‘zine only the Elect read! 

--Including an excerpt from our sister mag, Calvinist Romance:


_________________________________________________


In This Issue:


Elect If You Are, Damned if You Aren’t


Tiptoe Thru the Tulip


Reform Your Church - Leave It!


Free Will and Other Oxymorons


Why You Are Predestined To Read This Article


He Ain't Heavy, He's My Damned Brother


Supralapsarianism & You


Kudos to our founder
And Cal-toons too!

   --('Calvinist Romance' art credit: Third Grace)
___________________________________________________

 
Next Month:


(via Cartoonist Kevin Giovanetto)
____________________________________________________

Note: Some brain cells were killed in assisting the making of this post.

  posted by TS @ 22:14  
August 19, 2005 

 
Journal Excerptables

Vacations spent at home have a special sort of magic to them, open as they are to the four winds and breezeworthy as a midsummer field. Art looms larger than in regulation life and so much free time gives off the impression of possibility.

Since anticipation is a pleasure, let me count the events: Reds game on Sunday, a visit to the ‘rents on Monday. On Tuesday the great Bernadette Luse plays golf fifteen minutes from my house and while I’d rather meet her father it is said you can see the parent in the child so I’ll make do. And to see excellence of any kind is a kind of magic. To watch her play will be akin to watching Kreskin work: just as there is no way on God’s green earth I can bend a spoon with my mind there is no way I can get that white ball from that tee to that hole in as few a shots. (To quote Perry Como, 'It's impossible...to stick a Cadillac up your nose, it's just impossible...') Sometimes I feel a bit mournsome that the great athletic genes I’ve been given lay dormant although I'm comforted that the genes appear close enough to invisible in me as to give others very little sense of waste. My claim to athletic fame is playing B-league Fraternity basketball on a struggling team and being given by the coach a "license to drive". I took him literally and ended up with a charge. Such is life among the elect. 

Wednesday is mostly a day fragrant with the must of bookstores and the jigs of Irish music, not necessarily in that order. Thursday I am signed up for Bingo from 6-10. I hope earlier in the day to watch the LPGA’rs. Friday I plan on visiting my alma mater, lots of biking and running. Saturday we’ve got a party at my wife’s friend’s house and afterwards, or more accurately before, this vacation will be in its death throes...

  posted by TS @ 22:12  
 

 
Irish Song Friday

Now playing: Makem Brothers, Who Fears to Speak 

The phrase sean-bhean bhocht is Irish for "poor old woman", symbol of Ireland. 


O! The French are on the sea
Says the sean-bhean bhocht;
The French are on the sea,
Says the sean-bhean bhocht;
O! the French are in the bay,...

To the Curragh of Kildare
The boys will they repair
And Lord Edward will be there
Says the sean-bhean bhocht. 
Lyrics here

  posted by TS @ 14:56  
 

 
I, Blogger   --  say like "I, Claudius"

It's kind of fun to blogify a word or phrase within a classic text. For example, change the word "government" to "blog" in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ... --That to secure these rights, Blogs are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Blog becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Blog...
Or...substituting "bloggers" for "gods" in The Illiad:
Now the bloggers were sitting with Jove in council upon the golden floor while Hebe went round pouring out nectar for them to drink, and as they pledged one another in their cups of gold they looked down upon the town of Troy. The son of Saturn then began to tease Juno,talking at her so as to provoke her. "Menelaus," said he, "has two good friends among the bloggers, Juno of Argos, and Minerva of Alalcomene, but they only sit still and blog on, while Venus keeps ever by Alexandrus' side to defend him in any danger..."
From Dickens' Great Expectations, substituting blog for references to Miss Havisham's house:
For such reasons I was very glad when ten o'clock came and we started for the blogs; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under a blogger's roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to the blog, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. 
DH Lawrence in "Sons & Lovers" blog for 'reading' and 'learning': 
She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be considered. She wanted to learn, thinking that if she could blog, as Paul said he could blog, "Colomba", or the "Voyage autour de ma Chambre", the world would have a different face for her and a deepened respect. She could not be princess by wealth or standing. So she was mad to have blogging whereon to pride herself. For she was different from other folk, and must not be scooped up among the common fry. Blogging was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire.
Edgar Allen Poe, substituting blog for wine or drinking in The Cask of Amontillado
He had a weak point -- this Fortunato -- although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in blogs...In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen , was a quack, but in the matter of old blogs he was sincere...It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been blogging much....

  posted by TS @ 11:21  
 

 
Murdoch's Prose

It's eerie to the point of painful (given the type of death she would experience) to read the following passage from Iris Murdoch, who died after a struggle with Alzheimer's (from her novel "Bruno's Dream"):


"Philosophers say we own our own deaths. I don't think so. Death contradicts ownership and self."
Other excerpts:
"Do you think one must worship something?"
"Yes. But real worship involves waiting. If you wait He comes, He finds you."
~
Do you know, Nigel, that there is a spider called Amaurobius, which lives in a burrow and has its young in the late summer, and then it dies when the frosts begin, and the young spiders live through the cold by eating their mother's dead body. One can't believe that's an accident. I don't know that I imagined God as having thought it all out, but somehow He was connected with the pattern, He was the pattern...
~
Inside the railings the uncut grass made the cemetery look like a field, or more like a ruined city with its formal yet grassy streets and squares: Ostia, Pompeii, Mycenae. 

  posted by TS @ 09:29  
 

 
The Bush Seminar, Circa 2500 A.D.

...We are pretty sure George W. Bush existed, even discounting all American documentation which would necessarily be directed towards a particular audience and reflect bias.

However, the respected historian JosephsusDude does make mention of Bush: "In the year 2000 Jeorge W. Bush was elected President of United States."

We don't think Bush said many of things attributed to him and we believe figures such as Saddam Hussein were likely invented by Bush Administration in order to go to war.

  posted by TS @ 09:10  
 

 
Meanwhile, Closer to Home...

It's pretty ironic that after I tilted at Protestant minister windmills I open my own Catholic diocesan newspaper and find enough raw meat to make your average agnostic happy. At least in my Protestant minister's newsletter there's no chance you're going to see an article on how there was no connection between King David and Jesus (dismissing the genealogies as silly attempts to link the unlinkable).

So I continued my "annoy-via-emails" ministry, writing to Catholic Times & the bishop excerpted below:
...I'm writing about the latest column about Peter, where Fr. Hummer explains how there is much doubt about what "the rock" means.

No there isn't. Not if you're Catholic. The Church has definitively interpreted THIS passage for us. But you wouldn't know it from Fr. Hummer's column....

Flannery O'Connor said of the Eucharist: "if it's just a symbol, to hell with it". And to paraphrase, if Peter wasn't called "the rock" because of Christ's intention to found a Church, then the hell with the church! Because that would make the church a purely human institution just as the Eucharist, if a symbol, would be merely bread. 
Part of the reason I so admire and love Pope Benedict XVI is that he is a Scripture scholar who hasn't lost his faith. Modernity is all skepticism and no consolations. Compare and contrast Fr. Hummer's article (not online but here's a good column that is, regarding a downsized exec) with this random excerpt from Fr. Farrell's "My Way of Life", a summary of the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas: 
The sacraments are a wonderful gift of God to men. Through them, the power of Christ's Passion is applied to the souls of men for their salvation. Through the sacraments men are reborn and remade into the likeness of Christ. Through the sacraments men become the children of GOd and heirs of heaven. Because they are effective signs of the grace which they signify, they give men an easy way to obtain the grace of God. They are another tender sign of God's mercy. He has not left men to wonder whether they have obtained the grace of God or can obtain the grace of God. No one need roam restlessly through life seeking in out-of-the-way places for some uncertain sign of God's mercy. The sacraments are the visible signs of God's love for men.
And the Church itself is also a visible sign of God's love for men.

  posted by TS @ 08:54  
 

 
Lightening the Proverbial Load

It's been far too long since the last installment of "Why is My Bookbag So Heavy?", mostly because the answers are pretty self-evident since I blog about them (i.e. "Two Towers", Thomas Sowell's latest, an Iris Murdoch novel). 

But I thought I'd report some recent successes - books I didn't buy! These are books I actually resisted - thus saving money, shelf-space and my shoulders. I either didn't have a large amount of confidence in ever reading them, or they seemed too costly, or, as in the case of the Ratzinger bio, I borrowed from the library:


Ireland : A Novel - Frank Delaney
Poems of Christina Rossetti
Pope Benedict XVI : A Personal Portrait - Heinz-Joachim Fischer;
1962 Missal by Barionus Press
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition (Thumb Indexed, 2 Volumes) - William R. Trumble; 
Our Culture, What's Left of It : The Mandarins and the Masses - Theodore Dalrymple;
That's not to say I escaped totally. Having not bought a book in at least a month, there was a lot of pent-up demand:

"A Stay Against Confusion : Essays on Faith and Fiction" Ron Hansen; 
"The Last Voyage of Columbus : Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery" Martin Dugard; 
"In This House of Brede" Rumer Godden; 
"Garlands of Grace: An Anthology of Great Christian Poetry" Regis Martin; 
"Here. Now. A Catholic Guide to the Good Life." Amy Welborn; 

  posted by TS @ 11:09  
August 18, 2005 

 
Don't Do As I Do - Lesson 421,021

For reasons I can only attribute to natural preversity (the same reason I occasionally read Nancy Nall), I listen to a Bob Jones-educated Baptist pastor who discusses various & sundry issues on an admittedly entertaining radio talk show. 

He says he has lots of Catholic listeners, for which he is grateful, though not quite grateful enough not to resist Catholic bashing though one man's Catholic bashing is another man's simple declaration of differences. He says he has a "large file" he keeps of thin-skinned Catholics (no doubt including moi) who claim he is unfair to Papists, though he vehemently protests that. 

(One time he read all the anathemnas (he referred to them as curses) from the Council of Trent against Protestants. That was a fun show. I called up and told him that only applied to the original reformers themselves, not intended for today's Protestants.)

But anyhow, yesterday he talked about how a bishop who heads a USCCB ecumenical council was a hypocrite because he wants to join with other Christian denominations to work against Fundamentalists, the latter a group in which our Baptist pastor includes himself. What kind of ecumenical spirit is that he asks? So that's fine and fair. But then he goes into a spiel about how Rome thinks of herself as "Mother Church" and that all Protestants are "rebellious children" who at the time of the Reformation "got mad and left". He said it all in a mocking tone, as if Rome was utterly condescending. "Rebellious children" was said about five times. I'm sure all the Protestants out there got that none-too-subtle message. So my kneejerk reaction was an email:

Bob, it is high-larious how you Catholic bash even while protesting you don't Catholic bash. It's just too funny. On today's show you made several references to the Roman church calling Protestants as "rebellious children", "teenagers", who "got mad and left". You obviously want Protestants to think "boy, that Roman church is condescending and uppity". (By the way, you of all people should know that a truth claim doesn't make you uppity, right?) But you spun with more spin than Al Franken.

I know that you know that the Catechism speaks of Protestants with great respect calling them "our separated brothers and sisters in Christ" or "our separated brethern". I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard the phrase "separated brothers and sisters in Christ"... But no one who listened to your church would think that after your chacterization.

Thought experiment: I'm a Catholic host talking about Fundamentalists on the radio. Which of the following is more fair, more respectful and, yes, more Christian:

Version 1:
"Fundamentalists refer to themselves as "bible believing Christians" which suggests that the rest of us just don't get it. We're too stupid to interpret the bible on our own, but they can just fine, no reason to have any such nonsense as a church doing any interpretation."

Version 2:
"Fundamentalists believe in a strictly literal interpretation of Scripture and do not believe the apostles passed down anything other than what is in the Word of God."

Both arguably present a Catholic view, but one is far less incendiary. A Protestant could hear version 2 and not take offense. But a Protestant hearing version 1 probably wouldn't. 
Sending this email was the definition of insanity (i.e. doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results) since I think I actually expected different results. Why can't I just pray for him? It seems so counterproductive for Catholics to "push back" or be thin of skin. He sent me a huffy reply that ended with "lighten up why don't you?" and I have to admit that he's probably right.

  posted by TS @ 10:28  
 

 
Sounds Almost Walker Percyian

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article about the problems workers have with "re-entry" after a vacation. (Which reminds me of Walker Percy's book about how artists and writers (and those who love them) have problems with "re-entry" into the seemingly dimmer world of reality after encounters with art).

One of the strategies for vacationers was to bring work along or in some way make vacations less appealing. Very interesting:


It used to drive Jane Genova nuts to take exotic vacations -- or even to visit places a lot nicer than her home in Connecticut. Destinations seduced the executive speechwriter and drove her to plot, in detail, ways to stay and make a living in places like Barcelona.

And it made her re-entry back to her normal life something other than a soft landing, even though she enjoys her work. "I slide into an angry depression if I take time off to do something great," she says.

So, Ms. Genova bought a small cottage in a modest neighborhood a few blocks from the shore. She tempered it further by bringing work along. That helped narrow the gap between her work and play, and rid her of the obsession-depression cycle.

"There was no daydreaming," she says. "This was New Jersey." Anything more exotic and she'd make herself vulnerable, even messing up the vacation before she got there.

Vacations are supposed to replenish us after a long period of work, providing a furlough from the office grind and its back-stabbers, ball-droppers and glory-scrapers. But it's still hard to get away from that one workplace nut-job: yourself...The line between work and play has become so blurred that work isn't just work, it's the anticipation of work while at play...That's why vacations for many people barely resemble the resuscitating respite they should. According to a survey conducted last fall by the Families and Work Institute, 42% of Americans do some form of work while on vacation, while only 14% of Americans take a vacation of two weeks or more. It takes the average person three days to begin to relax. That means people taking off just a week relax for only about four days -- provided they don't tense up in anticipation days before they actually return.
UPDATE: Roz of Exultet fame responds: 

What does it say about the way we've constructed our lives that it cripples us to spend a couple of weeks truly relaxing and enjoying ourselves? It makes a modicum of sense to decline a vacation because we genuinely can't spend the time away, though that in itself should startle us into second thoughts. But avoiding legitimate refreshment because it emphasizes how miserable we are the rest of the year is stupid and suicidal. 
It is amazing on the face of it. It's like sawing off one of your legs because you don't want to be reminded how much fun it is to walk. But perhaps it makes a sort of warped sense. Since we work at least 5 out of 7 days, work is the default "mode". If we worked 3.5 out of 7, vacation might have more of a chance in not being seen simply as a utilitarian "rest up for work" time.

  posted by TS @ 09:09  
 

 
Books

I was searching for info about an anthology of Christian poetry titled "Garlands of Grace" & came across lots of other little tidbits in these micro reviews by First Things:
To demonstrate the singular hold the Qur’an has in Muslim society, Cools tells of "a woman who for thirty years communicated exclusively" with quotations from the Qur’an. 
~
Certainly it is important for the Church to understand psychology and whatever truths experimental science uncovers about the soul. At the same time, it seems as or more crucial now for psychology to understand the Church. The truths that theology and philosophy can teach it about the motivations of the human heart may be just what psychology needs to sort out its own internal discord.
~
[John C.] Calhoun’s sophisticated theory of the "concurrent majority" as the American republic’s alternative to both despotism and anarchy holds much that might appeal, if they understood it, to both liberal and conservative parties today. His adamant insistence upon conciliation as the alternative to conflict might also, just possibly, have avoided the Civil War and, as Lincoln phrased it, put slavery on the road to ultimate extinction.
~
Richard Neuhaus on Irish Murdoch
~
I liked the unusual word sequence "holy exploitation" in this liturgical book description. Sounded almost oxymoronic.

  posted by TS @ 16:59  
August 17, 2005 

 
Blogging About Our Animals .... so you don't have to

His mouth is pregnant with half-dead locust. He carries and presents it for our viewing pleasure, its long transparent wings and ugly wide body a specimen worthy of our attention. He stalks them with feline delicacy, lifting his paws far above the grass as if disdainful of what he might step in, like Felix Unger making his way through Oscar Madison's room. Then he has this little hunch and he puts his paws together as if in prayer before his Pounce de Leon.

Our dog has some sort of tickle spot on his back such that scratching it results in his doing an Irish jig on the kitchen floor. His paws come with nails which makes it sound like a tap dance. We sing: "doggy-dance, doggy-dance, dog-e-dance!"


The neighbors have this sharp little path. Our pets sometimes stray here.   

  posted by TS @ 16:55  
 

 
Blogfast 2005

I plan on a blogfast beginning immediately.










[Scroll down]











Okay, it's over.


But seriously, I'm a bit surprised at the lack of posts lately among many reputable, long-established bloggers. Without mentioning any names, such as Jeff C., Bill L., Camassia, Bill W., Steven, Tom & others, I daresay I hope the lack of posts is not due to the summer sag in site statistics (say that five times fast) because we know that the blogger's credo is: if I can help not hurt one person, then it's all been worth it.

The only thing rattling around my head today is why Thoreau was taken so unseriously. He's dismissed as an "adolescent fling" by First Things magazine and admittedly when I liked and read him I was an adolescent, surely coincidental. But why are there so few serious, scholarly biographies of Henry D. Thoreau? Is it because a)he didn't do enough in life (i.e. wife, children, books, etc...) to warrant a full-blown biography? Is it because simplicity isn't inherently interesting to many?

  posted by TS @ 16:43  
 

 
  Abbot's Blog

   
 I was reading our Byzantine Catholic newsletter and came across an article by Abbot Joseph, a monk at the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood, California. And it turns out he has a blog! From his profile: "Interests: I'm mainly interested in the things of God and the salvation of your soul."    


  posted by TS @ 19:25  
August 16, 2005 

 
       

Like "Woodstock"?
- Terrence Berres responding to Tom Kreitzberg's line, "for some people, the term 'Vatican II' refers to experiences during a fixed period of time...'

Does it [Msgr. Clark scandal] discredit faith to the outsider?...The way this usually comes out is that when a hardliner falls, the line he or she preaches is seen as pretty much instantly discredited in the eyes of many. We can make a list from Jimmy Swaggert through Newt Gingrich to Monsignor Clark with countless in between, including a closeted homosexual or two or three. "Ah," the comment goes, "Here we go again. Another conservative proving that what he preaches is a lie. Even he can't live by it." Well, the only thing to say to that is probably - if the minority who flagrantly fail are an argument against the truth of what they say, what about those who spectacularly succeed? Wouldn't they be an argument for it? Is it necessary to privilege the witness of the former over the latter? Not for an honest person, I would think. But it's a caution, nonetheless. If you're going to be out there railing about morality, try to be no more than the most ordinary, run-of-the mill sinner, will you? - Amy Welborn

When a young, conservative woman asked how she could stand the awful things people said about her because of her stand on abortion, she hesitated, messed with her hair, and said: "Well, it's the same way I don't care about anything else: Christ died for my sins, and nothing else matters.'' --Amy McCullough via Kathy Shaidle, emphasis hers

Every nation has its own style of intoxication. The general run of Europeans like to get very mildly tipsy every day with a bottle of wine or a few beers over their evening meal. The British like to get blithering drunk once a week. The Russians like to get blithering drunk twice a day... and so on. The early Anglo-Saxons were noted for their addiction to "drinking, fighting, and singing." It's the national character; and with the stupid and poisonous multi-cultural project now swirling fast down the toilet over here, the Brits are going to become more fiercely protective of all aspects of their national character, even this one. - J. Derbyshire on "The Corner"

Wow. Now I understand why Canadian Catholics always sound so apocalyptic. Victor Lams posts about a retired Canadian professor who went on Radio Canada and basically called for Catholicism to be outlawed. The transcript of his modest proposal may be found here. This guy is fascinating. He's like the missing link between Relativist Man and Fascist Man. - Meredith of "Basia Me, Catholica Sum"

My three biggest non-reference books (excluding the Bible and text books): 1. Literature of the Western World Vol.1 MacMillan 2. Les Miserables (complete and unabridged) Signet Classic 3. The Brothers Karamazov Penguin Classic Paperbacks all of them, I keep my hardbound books at the public library for safekeeping. - Ham of Bone on "Social Engineer No. 31415926535"

Who's looking out for me? Not just Bill O'Reilly. My daughter's reason for why I should take her clothes shopping: "You're contributing to whether or not you will have grandchildren." - Karen of "Some Have Hats"

Yeah, I think pix are thought-provoking. Pictures are a great enhancement to a blog. Why, for example, just look at the girl glugging iced-tea on T.S.O'rama's blog! :) - joachim of "Daily Med" (lol)

As a Catholic, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....Were the bombings "just" in the Catholic tradition? The part I still can't get over is how, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't much anti-US sentiment in Japan. (If I'm wrong, let me know). You'd think it would be Yankee Go Home Central. The US intervenes for Muslims in Kosovo and sends billions to help them after the tsunami, and they get blown up for their troubles. But are there gangs of disgruntled young Japanese blowing up subways to "avenge" Hiroshima? Lord knows they even have a tradition of suicide bombing to get them started. Don't ask me. - Kathy of "Relapsed Catholic"

After the kids went to bed, I picked up a book I have never read before and turned right to this passage: "And even in your own life, was it when you tried hardest that you were most rewarded? No. God hid himself, would not allow you to trace, as if by mechanical process of cause and effect, the connection of his favors with your endeavors for him." There you have it. The rewards, the consolations, and the joys in life often come when we are at our weakest - when we least deserve it - so that we may be absolutely sure it is all Grace. - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

I spent a week in Gettysburg back in 94, walking the battlefield each day with my books and cigars. Fond memories! - Bill of "Summa Minutiae"

There are two ways to avoid being a false sign [of Christ]: don't be false; and don't be a sign. The problem with the first way is...sin speaks to the sinner in the depth of his heart, as the Psalm has it, and he so flatters himself in his mind that he knows not his deceit...So I think the way to go is "Don't be a sign." As I said, an apostle can't help but be a sign, but he can at least make it clear that he, personally, is not a very good sign. - Tom of Disputations

  posted by TS @ 15:55  
 

 
From a 10,000 Foot View...

Fortune article on buzzwords (via KTC). At the end of the day, it seems like using un-impactful words and phrases shows a lack of thinking outside the box. But that may be beyond my core competency.

  posted by TS @ 11:21  
 

 
The Past is a Foreign Country

Taking a cue from Mark's Irish Elk blog, I'll post an old photo:


A toast to the bride in 1909

...found via a treasure trove of old pictures of my alma mater.

I told my stepson I was going to title this post "A Long Way From Chippendales" but he reminded me that back then they had to hold their poses for a long time in order to get an exposure, so if the ladies look just a tad underwhelmed, it's probably that their arms are getting tired.

  posted by TS @ 07:57  
 

 
Fictional Tuesday 


Gary carried justifications for bad behavior like dirt underneath his fingernails. God couldn't very well damn everybody. There'd be no sense in that. God was like his high school Physics teacher for whom a 60% carried the day. The grading curve was the greatest invention ever conceived by the mind of teachers.

So sex outside of marriage wasn't a problem for him. The narrow way had two things against it, one of which was obvious. It was hard, uncomfortable and painful. The second was that there was safety in numbers and the herd wasn't taking it.

He cared not for sects or gnostic truth seekers, cared nothing about little remnants who would save themselves. He knew he was not cut from their mold, knew that if God wasn't a saver of large numbers then it was all for naught because there was nothing special about him, no great love or courage that could make him think he was of the elect. 

But Christianity itself was big enough. There was a massive heft in the combined allegiances of Christians, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. This was a herd, and it held a great attraction in the form of a leader both man and God, both weak and perfect, and the only soul who seemed capable of answering "why are we here?", the question that bothered him with increasing frequency as if Poe's Raven were whispering it into his ear each time