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

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

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.

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.)

Understanding Styles

Interesting link via Amy's blog on the difference between "winter" and "summer" Christians.

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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Need Some Good News?

Go here!

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.

Funny

A Paul Harvey joke:

There are three types of people. Those who can count and those who can't.

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?