The nice thing about blogs is they don't just give you a chance to write, i.e. exercise the right side of your brain, you can also do it with the presentation....Hence the search for the perfect template never ends. Note the new art feature, stage left. Hopefully it won't affect load time too badly, if so let me know.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Blogs
Look at Emily's blog will ya? Is this not full of order, harmonious, easy on the eyes? Is this not what I am looking for in my life? The pacific blue and links-in-boxes inspire me to clean out my closet or something.
Check out the gothic look of this blog. Celtic cross & all and he's not even Catholic. Oliver Cromwell is spinning in his grave (I just saw the movie Oliver Cromwell starring Richard Harris by the way).
I like this page of Louder Fenn's. Tolle lege indeed. You don't have to tell this bibliophile twice.
Thanks to Veni Sanctespiritus and Lively Writer for the link to this blog.
Most honest blogger award goes to Joyce Garcia of Holy Weblog! fame. Her FAQ section is a hoot and contains the bawdy "Show us your hits". My, my.
June 19, 2002
Recent neuroscientific findings link the brain's frontal cortex - larger in humans than in animals - to inhibition, the ability to control impulses. It's this capacity for mental restraint that makes us uniquely responsible for what we do. The difference between 'is' and 'ought' is one only we can understand. Humans alone create a moral world. -
Marc Hauser [author of "Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think"]
Marc Hauser [author of "Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think"]
June 18, 2002
Old but good stuff from Jonah Goldberg of NRO fame:
There is a split in the ranks of intellectuals about how much ideas affect culture versus how much impersonal events affect it. Did society become secular, self-indulgent, morally subjective, etc., because Nietszche & Co. introduced a bunch of bad ideas? Or did society become all of those things because material prosperity, education, birth control, the automobile, etc., made such changes inevitable? To some extent it's a bit of a nature-versus-nurture argument, in that everybody agrees there's at least some of both going on.
But most of the time, conservatives ignore the fact that the automobile did as much to destabilize communities as rock and roll or Allen Ginsberg. The problem is that it's very difficult to argue with the car — but it is not only easy, it's fun to argue with hippy-dippy beatniks. Intellectuals like to fight ideas, not gadgets. This is especially true of conservatives, since we favor individual liberty and economic freedom; in a free-enterprise system, there's no acceptable policy position against the walkman or the cellular phone. There are plenty of people on the Left who want to ban cigarettes, certain foods, even the automobile. On the Right, we may entertain censorship of ideas (as does the Left; the difference is, we're just too dumb to lie about it) but censoring innovation is strictly and rightly verboten.
Unfortunately, we can focus so much on the perfidy of ideas we convince ourselves that if we can just prove to the world why these ideas are bad, everything will be fine. It's like the guy who looks for his lost car keys under the street lamp because the light is better there; academic nihilism may not be the chief cause of moral decay, but we can see things clearly there, so that's where we do the fighting.
Leaving aside the well-documented stubborn refusal of millions of people to let go of their bad ideas, culture is not just a collection of ideas. Almost every custom and tradition anywhere in the world — from the use of cutlery to burying our dead to the languages we speak — was begun out of some practical necessity. (Go read Hayek if you want a smart person to explain all that.)
Anyway, the point is that technology changes the times we live in but it doesn't change human nature (at least not yet). One of the challenges, today more than ever, is the need to recognize the problems which come from convenience. For example, many college kids today — and maybe even more journalists — think that if something isn't on the web, it doesn't exist. The truth is that the web excludes vastly more information than it includes. But because it is easy to use, we rely on it. This may be the greatest instance of socially imposed amnesia since the Russian Revolution, or the revolts of the iconoclasts or the Luddites. It is certainly the most successful one. At the same time, we think that simply because the web makes something easier to do, it means we should do it.
Think of it this way: Hard work leads to character. There isn't a person in the world who's written on the topic who doesn't say something like that. Now imagine if you could take a pill that would automatically make you very smart and in perfect physical shape overnight. Intelligence and physical strength used to be well-recognized by-products of character building. With the pill, there's no building — just the final product. That pill would be more dangerous to a virtuous society than any "if it feels good do it" doctrine coming out of Brown University.
There is a split in the ranks of intellectuals about how much ideas affect culture versus how much impersonal events affect it. Did society become secular, self-indulgent, morally subjective, etc., because Nietszche & Co. introduced a bunch of bad ideas? Or did society become all of those things because material prosperity, education, birth control, the automobile, etc., made such changes inevitable? To some extent it's a bit of a nature-versus-nurture argument, in that everybody agrees there's at least some of both going on.
But most of the time, conservatives ignore the fact that the automobile did as much to destabilize communities as rock and roll or Allen Ginsberg. The problem is that it's very difficult to argue with the car — but it is not only easy, it's fun to argue with hippy-dippy beatniks. Intellectuals like to fight ideas, not gadgets. This is especially true of conservatives, since we favor individual liberty and economic freedom; in a free-enterprise system, there's no acceptable policy position against the walkman or the cellular phone. There are plenty of people on the Left who want to ban cigarettes, certain foods, even the automobile. On the Right, we may entertain censorship of ideas (as does the Left; the difference is, we're just too dumb to lie about it) but censoring innovation is strictly and rightly verboten.
Unfortunately, we can focus so much on the perfidy of ideas we convince ourselves that if we can just prove to the world why these ideas are bad, everything will be fine. It's like the guy who looks for his lost car keys under the street lamp because the light is better there; academic nihilism may not be the chief cause of moral decay, but we can see things clearly there, so that's where we do the fighting.
Leaving aside the well-documented stubborn refusal of millions of people to let go of their bad ideas, culture is not just a collection of ideas. Almost every custom and tradition anywhere in the world — from the use of cutlery to burying our dead to the languages we speak — was begun out of some practical necessity. (Go read Hayek if you want a smart person to explain all that.)
Anyway, the point is that technology changes the times we live in but it doesn't change human nature (at least not yet). One of the challenges, today more than ever, is the need to recognize the problems which come from convenience. For example, many college kids today — and maybe even more journalists — think that if something isn't on the web, it doesn't exist. The truth is that the web excludes vastly more information than it includes. But because it is easy to use, we rely on it. This may be the greatest instance of socially imposed amnesia since the Russian Revolution, or the revolts of the iconoclasts or the Luddites. It is certainly the most successful one. At the same time, we think that simply because the web makes something easier to do, it means we should do it.
Think of it this way: Hard work leads to character. There isn't a person in the world who's written on the topic who doesn't say something like that. Now imagine if you could take a pill that would automatically make you very smart and in perfect physical shape overnight. Intelligence and physical strength used to be well-recognized by-products of character building. With the pill, there's no building — just the final product. That pill would be more dangerous to a virtuous society than any "if it feels good do it" doctrine coming out of Brown University.
June 17, 2002
C.S. Lewis wrote about "a particular recurrent experience which dominated my childhood," a kind of "intense longing which...is acute and even painful..yet the mere wanting of it is somehow a delight." Unlike other desires, Lewis says, which "are felt as pleasures only if satisfaction is expected in the near future," this desire contines to be prized, "and even to be preferred...even when there is no hope of possible satisfaction...this desire is so unusual because it cuts across our ordinary distinctions between longing and having."
I felt this too - I used to think it somehow unique or rare - but in adulthood I shrugged it off as some kind of inchoate pre-pubescent sexual longing...I like Lewis' description.
I felt this too - I used to think it somehow unique or rare - but in adulthood I shrugged it off as some kind of inchoate pre-pubescent sexual longing...I like Lewis' description.
June 15, 2002
A Friend's Conversion Story
“There was something raw about the images of women in Walker Percy's "Thanatos" that I liked perhaps a little too much. The first time I read "Love in the Ruins" (early '80's) I was a devout agnostic. As a recent convert to Catholicism (less than a year ago) I can say, without giving anything away, that it struck me *completely* differently when I recently reread it...
There was no defining moment, where the scales fell from my eyes and golden rays of enlightenment shone through newly opened doors of perception.... it was much more mundane than that. I have reconciled (finally) the idea that you (I mean I) could distinguish what you believe from what you can prove to be true. There's that Freethinker element, which rejects authority and dogma in favor of rational inquiry and speculation, and which traditionally has had way too loud a voice in the old mental committee...
Which is kind of why I stress the strict definition of agnosticism, which merely holds that you simply can't "Know", but you can still believe. My fiancee, who has been Catholic her whole life, invited me to attend mass a couple of years ago, and "yikes!" I found it enriching. As it continues to be... When I went through RCIA classes a year ago I had many rewarding conversations with a deacon from the Josephinum (now he's a priest in KC, Kansas) about how the Catholic Church reconciles and makes amends for its sometimes distasteful history. Still learning, -JD”
“There was something raw about the images of women in Walker Percy's "Thanatos" that I liked perhaps a little too much. The first time I read "Love in the Ruins" (early '80's) I was a devout agnostic. As a recent convert to Catholicism (less than a year ago) I can say, without giving anything away, that it struck me *completely* differently when I recently reread it...
There was no defining moment, where the scales fell from my eyes and golden rays of enlightenment shone through newly opened doors of perception.... it was much more mundane than that. I have reconciled (finally) the idea that you (I mean I) could distinguish what you believe from what you can prove to be true. There's that Freethinker element, which rejects authority and dogma in favor of rational inquiry and speculation, and which traditionally has had way too loud a voice in the old mental committee...
Which is kind of why I stress the strict definition of agnosticism, which merely holds that you simply can't "Know", but you can still believe. My fiancee, who has been Catholic her whole life, invited me to attend mass a couple of years ago, and "yikes!" I found it enriching. As it continues to be... When I went through RCIA classes a year ago I had many rewarding conversations with a deacon from the Josephinum (now he's a priest in KC, Kansas) about how the Catholic Church reconciles and makes amends for its sometimes distasteful history. Still learning, -JD”
Journal du jour
A weekend feature of more or less random journal entries from the past four years....in lieu of fresh writing:
06/21/00
Slipping into the glove of the summer equinox, a low-rider house reminds me of the houses on Capri, or those squat against the Florida sun with the brine smell of the near-ocean...then comes the clean smell of the laundry detergent at the Estero Laundrymat, proof that even in Paradise they have to clean clothes…
Meandered past houses that shone in the escaping natural light with preternaturally clipped grasses that soothe and relax, as order always does. Death, taxes, and Perot’s short-clipped never-out-of-place hair. The grass does not extrude an inch upon the sidewalk - are their lives so orderded or is this compensation for disordered lives? I’d love a lawn and garden worthy of such meditation, but too often the time spent meditating on its glory is a small fraction of the time spent accomplishing that condition.
07/03/01
After a few sundry raindrops, I continued for a visit to Ohio Village. A bit farther back in time I went, first the 1940s era exhibit inside the Historical society, followed by an outside visit to the old buildings and a patriotic speeches by guys dressed in period clothes. A horse-drawn carriage came by a very fast rate of speed and and I idly imagined the headlines if lawsuits weren't the issue:
Pedestrian Killed by Horse-drawn Carriage at Historical Society
A pedestrian-horse accident claimed the life of a visitor yesterday, according to an Ohio Historical society representative.
“We like to keep things exactly as they were in 1862, and back then if you were in the way, you got yourself run over,” said the Historical director. “They didn’t molly-coddle you back then. And he isn’t the first one you know.”
The Society has recently come under fire for the accidental lynching of a young black man.
04/02/02
Man has been divided for the millenium over questions that have perplexed the wise – how should we govern ourselves (politics) and what is truth (religion). Politics and religion. Religion and politics. Walker Percy once wrote "It crossed my mind that people at war have the same need of each other. What would a passionate liberal or conservative do without the other?"
With religion, differences have been made of hairsplitting distinction causing liberal Baptists to scorn their conservative Baptist neighbor. And now to this panoply of divisive issues we can add one more, one of hairsplitting (or at least hairwetting) dimensions: rain. To rain or not to rain is the question, but just don’t ask it in front of a mother and daughter with a combined age of an impressive 155 years. It has been said that into each life a little rain must fall, and into their lives this damp, discordant subject has reared its dripping head.
Yes, to that long grey line of controversies such as “how many angels can fit on a pin?” and “how does trickle-down economics work?”, we add “how much rain is too much rain?”. My mother and grandma are absolutists on the subject, and therein lies the problem. No rain is too much for Grandma, no number of sunny days too many for Mom. They have reached an impasse.
A short look of how man has evolved may illumine this touchy subject. Over most of the past 20,000 years, rain was considered so important it was deemed a god and sacrificed to. It became so because it was so intimately connected to the livliehood of the first agriculturalists, farmers if you will. Rain meant crops would grow, drought mean crops would die. Theoretically a lack of sun could also cause crops to die, but the sun never seemed to be a problem. However, for the millions of years prior to the first agriculturalists rain was a nuisance, making it more difficult to find and catch prey. We see the two groups still today - Mom is a hunter/gatherer on the subject, and Grandma an early agriculturalist.
Mom showed her hunter/gatherer tendencies early. For most of the early 1970s she sang to her children songs like, “rain, rain, go away, come back some other day!”. That sounded a bit disingenuous to our young ears, for if truth be told there didn’t seem a day she did want it to come back.
Grandma, on the other hand, comes from a long line of farmers going back to west Ireland. She lived on a farm, and through a depression, and rain was like money except it couldn’t be stored. Her parents sang and composed pro-rain ditties like, “Rain, rain why can’t it rain?” and the classic “Let that be a rain cloud and not a dust cloud”.
Ireland, you see, is the land of milk and honey, if by milk you mean rain and by honey you mean rain. The Irish have learned to deal with the unrelenting rain over the centuries by drinking a lot. An awful lot. They developed one of the smoothest whiskey’s (Jameson) and one of the best ales (Guinness). They’ve never invented much else, and that should tell you something about a rainy climate. But I’m not here to insert my admittedly sunny-day bias. I can have an opinion and not let it affect my reporting, for this is a no-spin zone. I report, you decide.
Alas we see that the roots for a great conflict were sown. Just as the pro-slave South went on its merry way during the antebellum period while the North became increasingly abolitionist, so did Grandma and Mom become even more fixed in their beliefs: that rain was intolerable and that sunny days were tragic.
What is the solution? A civil war? No! Perhaps as simple as avoiding the subject.
A weekend feature of more or less random journal entries from the past four years....in lieu of fresh writing:
06/21/00
Slipping into the glove of the summer equinox, a low-rider house reminds me of the houses on Capri, or those squat against the Florida sun with the brine smell of the near-ocean...then comes the clean smell of the laundry detergent at the Estero Laundrymat, proof that even in Paradise they have to clean clothes…
Meandered past houses that shone in the escaping natural light with preternaturally clipped grasses that soothe and relax, as order always does. Death, taxes, and Perot’s short-clipped never-out-of-place hair. The grass does not extrude an inch upon the sidewalk - are their lives so orderded or is this compensation for disordered lives? I’d love a lawn and garden worthy of such meditation, but too often the time spent meditating on its glory is a small fraction of the time spent accomplishing that condition.
07/03/01
After a few sundry raindrops, I continued for a visit to Ohio Village. A bit farther back in time I went, first the 1940s era exhibit inside the Historical society, followed by an outside visit to the old buildings and a patriotic speeches by guys dressed in period clothes. A horse-drawn carriage came by a very fast rate of speed and and I idly imagined the headlines if lawsuits weren't the issue:
Pedestrian Killed by Horse-drawn Carriage at Historical Society
A pedestrian-horse accident claimed the life of a visitor yesterday, according to an Ohio Historical society representative.
“We like to keep things exactly as they were in 1862, and back then if you were in the way, you got yourself run over,” said the Historical director. “They didn’t molly-coddle you back then. And he isn’t the first one you know.”
The Society has recently come under fire for the accidental lynching of a young black man.
04/02/02
Man has been divided for the millenium over questions that have perplexed the wise – how should we govern ourselves (politics) and what is truth (religion). Politics and religion. Religion and politics. Walker Percy once wrote "It crossed my mind that people at war have the same need of each other. What would a passionate liberal or conservative do without the other?"
With religion, differences have been made of hairsplitting distinction causing liberal Baptists to scorn their conservative Baptist neighbor. And now to this panoply of divisive issues we can add one more, one of hairsplitting (or at least hairwetting) dimensions: rain. To rain or not to rain is the question, but just don’t ask it in front of a mother and daughter with a combined age of an impressive 155 years. It has been said that into each life a little rain must fall, and into their lives this damp, discordant subject has reared its dripping head.
Yes, to that long grey line of controversies such as “how many angels can fit on a pin?” and “how does trickle-down economics work?”, we add “how much rain is too much rain?”. My mother and grandma are absolutists on the subject, and therein lies the problem. No rain is too much for Grandma, no number of sunny days too many for Mom. They have reached an impasse.
A short look of how man has evolved may illumine this touchy subject. Over most of the past 20,000 years, rain was considered so important it was deemed a god and sacrificed to. It became so because it was so intimately connected to the livliehood of the first agriculturalists, farmers if you will. Rain meant crops would grow, drought mean crops would die. Theoretically a lack of sun could also cause crops to die, but the sun never seemed to be a problem. However, for the millions of years prior to the first agriculturalists rain was a nuisance, making it more difficult to find and catch prey. We see the two groups still today - Mom is a hunter/gatherer on the subject, and Grandma an early agriculturalist.
Mom showed her hunter/gatherer tendencies early. For most of the early 1970s she sang to her children songs like, “rain, rain, go away, come back some other day!”. That sounded a bit disingenuous to our young ears, for if truth be told there didn’t seem a day she did want it to come back.
Grandma, on the other hand, comes from a long line of farmers going back to west Ireland. She lived on a farm, and through a depression, and rain was like money except it couldn’t be stored. Her parents sang and composed pro-rain ditties like, “Rain, rain why can’t it rain?” and the classic “Let that be a rain cloud and not a dust cloud”.
Ireland, you see, is the land of milk and honey, if by milk you mean rain and by honey you mean rain. The Irish have learned to deal with the unrelenting rain over the centuries by drinking a lot. An awful lot. They developed one of the smoothest whiskey’s (Jameson) and one of the best ales (Guinness). They’ve never invented much else, and that should tell you something about a rainy climate. But I’m not here to insert my admittedly sunny-day bias. I can have an opinion and not let it affect my reporting, for this is a no-spin zone. I report, you decide.
Alas we see that the roots for a great conflict were sown. Just as the pro-slave South went on its merry way during the antebellum period while the North became increasingly abolitionist, so did Grandma and Mom become even more fixed in their beliefs: that rain was intolerable and that sunny days were tragic.
What is the solution? A civil war? No! Perhaps as simple as avoiding the subject.
June 14, 2002
Our priest weighed in on the bishop's shuffling bad priests around. He said (I'm paraphrasing): 'you ask what were they thinking? Probably not much. Or to the extent they were they had absorbed the culture into their decision-making. And our culture lacks common sense. An example: a wealthy businessman, widely respected for his ability to make money, was caught in a massive tax fraud. You ask why? What was he thinking? He didn't need more money. The thing he was praised for was the same thing he was denounced for...'
Sounds like the bishops may grandfather in the 'zero tolerance' policy. They've apparently chosen to throw o'er their own to please the media. I guess in the rock-paper-scissors game the media trumps clericalism. A phyrric victory of sorts for the parishioner in the pew.
Sounds like the bishops may grandfather in the 'zero tolerance' policy. They've apparently chosen to throw o'er their own to please the media. I guess in the rock-paper-scissors game the media trumps clericalism. A phyrric victory of sorts for the parishioner in the pew.
Poetry Friday
That crazy herdsman will tell his fellows
That he has been all night upon the hills,
Riding to hurley, or in the battle-host
With the Ever-living.
What if he speak the truth,
And for a dozen hours have been a part
Of that more powerful life?
His wife knows better.
Has she not seen him lying like a log,
Or fumbling in a dream about the house?
And if she hear him mutter of wild riders?
She knows that it was but the cart-horse coughing
That set him to fancy. - excerpt from W. B. Yeats poem
That crazy herdsman will tell his fellows
That he has been all night upon the hills,
Riding to hurley, or in the battle-host
With the Ever-living.
What if he speak the truth,
And for a dozen hours have been a part
Of that more powerful life?
His wife knows better.
Has she not seen him lying like a log,
Or fumbling in a dream about the house?
And if she hear him mutter of wild riders?
She knows that it was but the cart-horse coughing
That set him to fancy. - excerpt from W. B. Yeats poem
Interesting post from Thomas Hibbs on National Review Online today:
Catholic schools, the majority of which are under the control of the local bishop, have many virtues, but they typically produce graduates who are theologically illiterate, but who — because of their affiliation with Catholic education — think that they already know everything about the Church. Asking your average graduate to say something intelligent about, say, the trinity or the communion of saints, would prompt responses akin to those Jay Leno receives when he walks the streets of L.A. quizzing ordinary citizens about American history and current events.
In their indifference to doctrine, many American Catholics are already more American than Catholic. Tocqueville observed that the effect of democratic culture upon religion is to deflect the believer's attention away from specific and divisive doctrinal issues toward general moral principles. The vague pantheism he predicted is evident precisely in the popularity of the vacuous term "spirituality" as a replacement for "religion." What many Catholics apparently believe about the core doctrinal issue of the Eucharist is that it's just a symbol. But if you don't believe that what the Church teaches about this and other fundamental issues is true, why, especially these days, remain Catholic? As Flannery O'Connor once remarked in response to the suggestion that in our enlightened age no one could continue to believe traditional Catholic teaching about the Eucharist : "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."
Catholic schools, the majority of which are under the control of the local bishop, have many virtues, but they typically produce graduates who are theologically illiterate, but who — because of their affiliation with Catholic education — think that they already know everything about the Church. Asking your average graduate to say something intelligent about, say, the trinity or the communion of saints, would prompt responses akin to those Jay Leno receives when he walks the streets of L.A. quizzing ordinary citizens about American history and current events.
In their indifference to doctrine, many American Catholics are already more American than Catholic. Tocqueville observed that the effect of democratic culture upon religion is to deflect the believer's attention away from specific and divisive doctrinal issues toward general moral principles. The vague pantheism he predicted is evident precisely in the popularity of the vacuous term "spirituality" as a replacement for "religion." What many Catholics apparently believe about the core doctrinal issue of the Eucharist is that it's just a symbol. But if you don't believe that what the Church teaches about this and other fundamental issues is true, why, especially these days, remain Catholic? As Flannery O'Connor once remarked in response to the suggestion that in our enlightened age no one could continue to believe traditional Catholic teaching about the Eucharist : "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."
June 13, 2002
One of my five readers suggested that I go with layout of dark letters against a light background for easier reading...Since she represents 20% of the readership, her voice caries much weight. Anyone second the motion? I'm not too fond of the way italics look...
Stolen from another blog
"It's a battle to death between gluttony & sloth. The main reason I'm not fatter is that I can't eat while I'm sleeping."
Humorous comments on the perils of book ownership.
Stolen from another blog
"It's a battle to death between gluttony & sloth. The main reason I'm not fatter is that I can't eat while I'm sleeping."
Humorous comments on the perils of book ownership.
Vignettes
When I was in the throes of my agony, i.e. surgery at the age of seven, I remember Dad saying: “I wish I could take your place”. I was struck by it and never forgot it. The notion of self-sacrifice was still completely foreign to me then (as a matter of fact I’m not too familiar with it presently either). Mom added, “Me too.” And I was never sure whether she meant she wished dad could take my place too or herself…
****
When I was young we had a neighbor who was a severe alcoholic. I was told he gave up alcohol every Lent and then drink wildly on Easter. My first reaction was to cringe and think "legalism!" or "what's the point?". But it occurred to me that he gave up the most important thing in his life for forty days every year. He put God ahead of thing that almost defined him. How many of us can say that? The point is not to not have pleasures, but to acknowledge there is something more important that pleasure. And our wild-eyed neighbor did that every Lent.
****
My wife recently laughed at me for writing the worst poem ever on the eve of our vacation to the Great Smokies. Funny, we bonded more over my lame poem than others that might've attained mere mediocrity.
Cusp, cusp,
cusp of vacation;
sweet rim of a Tuesday night
lipp’d edge
of freedom
momentary as a a dandelion’s flower
black asphalt’s answer;
tarway to heaven.
Don't say I didn't warn ya.
****
I woke up one morning recently to find all my clothes either slightly too large or too small. The ones too large were hand me-downs from dad. The ones too small were hand me-ups from my stepson.
****
I was reading an Updike novel to my wife one night, and we came across the phrase "deer scat" and since then we use it to amuse ourselves in unlikely situations. Example: she pays the bills and then leaves an Excel spreadsheet of them for me.
"I see you left some scat on my desk last nite," I say.
She laughs.
When I write her a check for my half of the bills, I write in the memo portion, "scat payment".
I know, too much information.
***
“Draggin’ my chains….draggin’ my chains….well I'm movin’ in slow motion, but it’s motion just the same. Well I may not be free yet, but I’m draggin’ my chains” – Pam Tills song.
When I was in the throes of my agony, i.e. surgery at the age of seven, I remember Dad saying: “I wish I could take your place”. I was struck by it and never forgot it. The notion of self-sacrifice was still completely foreign to me then (as a matter of fact I’m not too familiar with it presently either). Mom added, “Me too.” And I was never sure whether she meant she wished dad could take my place too or herself…
****
When I was young we had a neighbor who was a severe alcoholic. I was told he gave up alcohol every Lent and then drink wildly on Easter. My first reaction was to cringe and think "legalism!" or "what's the point?". But it occurred to me that he gave up the most important thing in his life for forty days every year. He put God ahead of thing that almost defined him. How many of us can say that? The point is not to not have pleasures, but to acknowledge there is something more important that pleasure. And our wild-eyed neighbor did that every Lent.
****
My wife recently laughed at me for writing the worst poem ever on the eve of our vacation to the Great Smokies. Funny, we bonded more over my lame poem than others that might've attained mere mediocrity.
Cusp, cusp,
cusp of vacation;
sweet rim of a Tuesday night
lipp’d edge
of freedom
momentary as a a dandelion’s flower
black asphalt’s answer;
tarway to heaven.
Don't say I didn't warn ya.
****
I woke up one morning recently to find all my clothes either slightly too large or too small. The ones too large were hand me-downs from dad. The ones too small were hand me-ups from my stepson.
****
I was reading an Updike novel to my wife one night, and we came across the phrase "deer scat" and since then we use it to amuse ourselves in unlikely situations. Example: she pays the bills and then leaves an Excel spreadsheet of them for me.
"I see you left some scat on my desk last nite," I say.
She laughs.
When I write her a check for my half of the bills, I write in the memo portion, "scat payment".
I know, too much information.
***
“Draggin’ my chains….draggin’ my chains….well I'm movin’ in slow motion, but it’s motion just the same. Well I may not be free yet, but I’m draggin’ my chains” – Pam Tills song.
Got mixed emotions about these PenPal appeal for cash on some Catholic blogger sites. On the one hand, one feels the urge to contribute since they are allies in the culture wars, bedfellows for truth. And heck even Subway sandwich 'artists' have tip jars. (Why not McDonald's grill cooks?) On the other hand, and I'm obviously flamboyantly jealous, but it seems an outrage that they should be paid to pontificate. Certainly blogging is child's play compared to writing a book. Let them get paid for their books (that sounds like 'let them eat cake'), although admittedly in a culture that is skewed and somewhat not ready for truth their books don't get their due. Still, I like Amy Welborn's decision to use her blog to point to them. In a recent column Jonah Goldberg hinted that with blogs you pretty much get what you pay for. Which is why they are (say it with me)....free!
Current Reading
Theology and/or "deep" books are the crack cocaine of my reading world; likely to keep me wired tightly and up at night. Since I am more comfortable than afflicted, theology tends to afflict more than comfort. I can't read Chyrsostom and feel good about myself. A recent example: Jesus said that those who error or lead others astray in small matters will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. This would seem to imply good news. That those who are imperfect or who might lead people astray will at least go to heaven. But nooo, Chrysostom & Augustine say that the "least in the kingdom" could still refer to hell (I forget why, I can find the exact wording if anyone wants to know). Part of the reason is Jesus' making the smallest sins large (i.e. equating lust with adultery). Perhaps this is another way of them saying what Jesus said about the rich - the impossibility of being good without God, how it's impossible to earn heaven. And if so, that is a good thing. But it's not for the scrupulous.
The best antidote to theological reading is something earthy, funny and slightly irreverent (and/or a cold dark beer). And David Lodge is fitting that bill perfectly in "Small World". He makes marvelous fun of clueless academics. I'm also reading Harry Stein's surprisingly engaging "How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Found Inner Peace". I'm almost done with Jean Baudrillard's pompous, look-down-my-French-nose review of America. These books you don't have to take too seriously - Baudrillard because he's such an elitist know it all, Stein because he's funny and sticks to uncontroversial topics (for me) and Lodge because he can flat out write. I used to read Kinky Friedman and/or Mark Leyner but now find them a little too...too...scatalogically childish?
Current Reading
Theology and/or "deep" books are the crack cocaine of my reading world; likely to keep me wired tightly and up at night. Since I am more comfortable than afflicted, theology tends to afflict more than comfort. I can't read Chyrsostom and feel good about myself. A recent example: Jesus said that those who error or lead others astray in small matters will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. This would seem to imply good news. That those who are imperfect or who might lead people astray will at least go to heaven. But nooo, Chrysostom & Augustine say that the "least in the kingdom" could still refer to hell (I forget why, I can find the exact wording if anyone wants to know). Part of the reason is Jesus' making the smallest sins large (i.e. equating lust with adultery). Perhaps this is another way of them saying what Jesus said about the rich - the impossibility of being good without God, how it's impossible to earn heaven. And if so, that is a good thing. But it's not for the scrupulous.
The best antidote to theological reading is something earthy, funny and slightly irreverent (and/or a cold dark beer). And David Lodge is fitting that bill perfectly in "Small World". He makes marvelous fun of clueless academics. I'm also reading Harry Stein's surprisingly engaging "How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and Found Inner Peace". I'm almost done with Jean Baudrillard's pompous, look-down-my-French-nose review of America. These books you don't have to take too seriously - Baudrillard because he's such an elitist know it all, Stein because he's funny and sticks to uncontroversial topics (for me) and Lodge because he can flat out write. I used to read Kinky Friedman and/or Mark Leyner but now find them a little too...too...scatalogically childish?
June 12, 2002
On the subject of saints from Amy Welborn.
What an honest and revealing reflection.... No wonder she's so esteemed in the blogging community. It's also here.
In response to Mark Shea's post: I think we're Catholic ultimately because it is the shortest path to holiness or sainthood, which is the only thing that matters.
So isn't the fact that these bishops act little better than your average CEO so discouraging in part because of their great access to grace and yet non-cooperation in/with it? Given all the Masses they say, and all the prayers that are said for them, it seems to show at the very least the resistability of grace. Now that is scary.
"You're nobody till somebody blogs you..."
Thanks to Praise of Glory and Zounds and Tim Drake for the links.
Gosh they have good taste.
June 11, 2002
The humorous Hokie Pundit (example: rejected title for paper:
Abortion: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Womb) has an
interesting inquiry: Can We Live Both the American Dream and Obey God's Will?
I asked a similar question (concerning military service) of an Catholic columnist (not our Amy Welborn btw), who replied, interestingly:
If it is quite unthinkable that Jesus would be a soldier, and if Christians are supposed to imitate Christ, doesn't it follow that Christians should not serve in the military?
There are, it seems to me, only two ways of getting around this difficulty. One way is to say that the non-military life of Jesus was purely accidental; that in other circumstances he would have taken up arms.
The other way (and this is the way the Catholic Church has traditionally dealt with the difficulty) is to say that there are two levels at which the "imitation" can be pursued. The higher level is that followed by priests and religious; the lower level is that followed by ordinary laypersons. The "hihger imitation" attempts to stay very close to the life of Jesus, including the rejection of arms; the "lower imitation" doesn't come nearly that close, and permits -- in addition to marriage and wealth -- military service.
I don't know if this second way of answering the difficulty is philosophically satisfactory, but it certainly has been the traditional Catholic way. Vatican II called into question the distinction between the higher and lower imitation of Christ...
Abortion: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Womb) has an
interesting inquiry: Can We Live Both the American Dream and Obey God's Will?
I asked a similar question (concerning military service) of an Catholic columnist (not our Amy Welborn btw), who replied, interestingly:
If it is quite unthinkable that Jesus would be a soldier, and if Christians are supposed to imitate Christ, doesn't it follow that Christians should not serve in the military?
There are, it seems to me, only two ways of getting around this difficulty. One way is to say that the non-military life of Jesus was purely accidental; that in other circumstances he would have taken up arms.
The other way (and this is the way the Catholic Church has traditionally dealt with the difficulty) is to say that there are two levels at which the "imitation" can be pursued. The higher level is that followed by priests and religious; the lower level is that followed by ordinary laypersons. The "hihger imitation" attempts to stay very close to the life of Jesus, including the rejection of arms; the "lower imitation" doesn't come nearly that close, and permits -- in addition to marriage and wealth -- military service.
I don't know if this second way of answering the difficulty is philosophically satisfactory, but it certainly has been the traditional Catholic way. Vatican II called into question the distinction between the higher and lower imitation of Christ...
Normally bishops serve. One of the Pope's titles is "Servant of the servants of God". And so it is disconcerting that now lay people have to carry our shepherds, forgive them their sins (in a sense), and bear them as burden. And perhaps that is healthy thing, both in terms of our exercising our strength to forgive and also in the sense of not expecting from them what only God can deliver.
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