Comedic Plumbers in High Demand

My wife wants me to talk to a plumber even though I don't know nuthin' about plumbing other than when you hit a silver lever waste products magically disappear. Maureen Dowd recently said that women like men who are funny since they are more attracted by what comes to them by the ear. Unfortunately it seems like my wife is more interested in my household repair skills than my comedic skills. I take this as a coded message to try to increase my comedic skills.

The Mystery that is Dick Cheney

There's nobody more puzzling, or arguably disappointing, in the Bush Administration than Dick Cheney. And while for a long time he got a ridiculously unfair rap as if he were still on Haliburton's payroll, word on the street is that Cheney has fallen in to the President's disfavor for the obvious reason: Iraq.

Back in 2000 Cheney seemed the adult at the party. He was the cool, fatherly figure who had a black belt in self-control. He didn't seem to let emotions get in the way of decision-making. If anger makes you stupid, it seemed you could count on him to not get angry to the point of stupidity. In the vice-presidential debate there were not a few who thought: "I wish he was the presidential candidate."

Appearances often deceive, but personal virtues can manifest themselves and carry over into policy-making. The crucial thing for public figures at that high a level must do is to not make it personal, not make it about themeselves. And Cheney seemed to have that quality, although he was sorely tested by a mainstream media that thinks irresponsibility is more responsibility than right and more right than privilege. The fact that he didn't strike back, and took all the unfairness was in his favor. But then he told a Senator to go "f--- himself", which suggested there was anger there that could be affecting his decision-making.

Maybe this that would place too much emphasis on the personal virtues. What were/are Cheney's core values? One of the marvelous things about Ronald Reagan was that his core value was his Christianity which was attended by the marvelous self-control and understanding that this wasn't about himself. To paraphrase Archie Bunker - "Mister we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again..."

Even those who know Cheney for years ask about what happened: “The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney,” Brent Scowcroft said recently in the New Yorker. “I consider Cheney a good friend—I’ve known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.”

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I had asked for,
but eveything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered;
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

--Unknown Confederate soldier

Thankful I Am For Last Weekend Too



Well last weekend in the Appalachian hills was remarkably restorative. I marvel at it myself, heady in my still extant restfulness. An '04 Christmas gift from mom & dad, the just-a-bit over 24 hour excursion was well-spent at least in the earthly sense, which I'll re-live now for re-experiential porpoises.

oh, but we landed on that wind-bitten hill about 4pm, in time for a first hike - just a half-hour or so, to scout around and admire and begin to inculcate the view. It's still ritual at this point.

After, we watched one of the VHS tapes lying around, a movie titled “Fifteen Minutes” starring Robert DeNiro. Cotton candy for the brain. I slept and slept and slept. Ten hours till a new man. And in that morning the sun streamed in like a champion. The window over the bed beheld a wild expanse of woods. (Oh the woods gave up their leaves so soon! It feels a personal betrayal. Let but a few break convention!) The sliding glass doors held a picture book view from ten feet above the ground while the small circular hottub on the deck sat like a future promise.

Our dog Obi was chompin’ at the bit, knowing that hikes were in the offing. We lit out like a couple Huck Finns, but the hike was short-lived. I’d had visions of our ’01 visit to Hocking, my first blog post, this same time of year, this same lucky sun-warmth, when we contemplatively-read while sipping sophisticated coffee in the unrepeatable ten a.m. light. There is nothing more civilized than reading while sipping from a warm mug of coffee on a sylvan November morning. Nothing.

So Obi and I circled back and we ensconsced in the beauty of the little cabin, her pine boards full of dark ciricular knots that looked like areolas. I read with the leisure of a man with time to quaff, like a man with nothing but cold pints ahead. From an array of twenty books I picked up “1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion” and read long, like a wide receiver heading downfield. Slipped into the near recliner and read like the wind, then later slipped into the hottub with a cigar and the view.

My body temperature warmed enough to sit out on the front porch and I thought how much I love country front porches. I sit out on the back porch a lot at home, but there is something about a front porch. The feeling of home ownership (or rental-ship) and of holding down the fort. Or maybe it’s just the better furniture and the different view; the simple creature comfort of a bench and a stool for my feet.



Soon it was noon-thirty and the Buckeye-Michigan game was imminent. If I was to hike it’d have to be now. Tanned, rested and ready, I headed out into the whiskey-still brill sunshine, Obi at the leash. We gaped at the view, the view of a house on the far hill standing as a castle in the mist. There is something in long views that is deeply affective. I gazed at roads that itched to be traveled as we walked down long Berry Road. Obi saw bucks top-heavy with antlers but we couldn't catch them; I made the token effort for his sake.

Back at the cabin, having missed the first quarter, I had a couple St. Pauli Girls during the Great Game. And great it was, one of the best games we'd seen all year. Steph came home from shopping with lunch from the Amish restaurant and food up until now had seemed a nuisance - I had my first real meal at two-something. Broasted chicken and mashed potatoes…yumm! The game went down to the wire but took with it our mini-vacation. We celebrated the Buckeye win with a hike in the dying light along the property, catching views of far houses sitting in their Little-House-On-The-Prairie dignity.

The sun went down, as it daily will, and we packed up and headed back home. But the memories of that big white-curtained window with the view of sun-clad trees resonated and lingered like the words of an Oirish novel.

A Quick Thought

The JCecil/Elena embroglio would seem to be a sort of a text book case on how it's not good for those with opposite viewpoints to tangle. My working theory is that people are influenced not by their opposites but by those who are just a tad to the right or left of themselves, or a tad more religious or less religious. Degrees, by degrees we are bid. I recall the blogger at Sancta Sanctis saying that Andrew Greeley, of all people, softened the ground of her eventual conversion.

I recall, in hindsight with some hilarity, offering a Marian piece Greeley had written to a staunch Calvinist friend of my wife's. This friend of hers thought that the Roman church was the Whore of Babylon and that the world would end (backed up with a complex and intricate study of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel) on December 31st, 2002. What was funny was that I had, in complete innocence, thought that Greeley's piece would "speak to her". Instead it only reinforced her anti-Catholicism. I heard back from my wife that there was a lot of "ahh ha'ing!". I presume she probably kept it as exhibit A of the bankruptedness of Roman church.

But what is unintentionally funny is that she, armed with her meticulous thirty pages pointing to the day of the end of the Last Age, and me, armed with my Greeley defense of Marian piety, thought we would influence each other. Perhaps we did, by making each the more extreme.

Today is the feast of Pope St. Clement...

... martryed in 101 A.D.. I didn't realize that his letters to the Corinthians were read in churches and nearly included in the canon of Scripture. "Both St. Paul in 1 Corinthians and St. Clement here in 1 Clement are writing to the same city-church (within 35-40 years of each other); and that both these scriptures were read side-by-side by this church -- both being considered Divinely-inspired by the Corinthians for 300 years!" (from here) And according to this: "The Coptic-Arabic Church include with the canonical Scriptures the Apostolic Constitutions and the Clementine Epistles". Here are St. Clement's own words to the Corinthians:

"Let every one," says the saint, "be subject to another, according to the order in which he is placed by the gift of God. Let not the strong man neglect the care of the weak; let the weak see that he reverence the strong. Let the rich man distribute to the necessity of the poor, and let the poor bless God who give :h him one to supply his want. Let the wise man show forth his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. Let him that is humble, never speak of himself, or make show of his actions. Let him that is pure in the flesh, not grow proud of it, knowing that it was another who gave him the gift of continence. They who are great cannot yet subsist without those that are little; nor the little without the great. In our body, the head without the feet is nothing; neither the feet without the head. And the smallest members of our body are yet both necessary and useful to the whole." Thus the saint teaches that the lowest in the church may be the greatest before God, if they are most faithful in the discharge of their respective duties.

Nail. Hammer. Head.

Amy seems to make the rest of us superfluous on these issues. I'm reduced to a blathering, "what she says". She writes:

The problem is not, in simple terms, the homosexual priest. The problem is priests who don't believe what the Catholic Church teaches on sexuality, who don't preach it, who don't witness to it in the confessional, and who don't live it in their private lives...I have never understood the appeal of the Catholic priesthood for the actively gay man who doesn't give a flip about Church teaching on this score. If you want to serve others, go into social work or psychology or something. But if you don't believe it, and don't live it...why are you here?
...
Oh, and word to the self-identified "gay priests" who are all over NPR today. To right off the bat self-identify as "gay" is to indicate, pretty clearly, that something else other than Christ is at the center of your life. If your priest got up in the pulpit and proclaimed "I am a heterosexual priest," wouldn't you go, uh...okay.

Here's a parody for your non-edification.

Happy Birthday KTC

Where have all the bloggers gone,
long time passing?
Where have all the bloggers gone,
long time away...

Remembering past bloggers: Dylan of Tenebrae, Chris of "Maine Catholic", Mark of "Minute Particulars", Gerard of "Blog for Lovers", Michelle of "And Then?" and Kathy of Gospel Minefield.

Update: In a rare email, KTC says "I am not dead!" Certainly reports of her demise are premature, though this post spoke only of her blogging demise.

Confiteor Meme



I'd hoped I was going to skate on this one, but smockmama got me. (Although it feels like Bill Luse already confessed for me. Good to see that semi- prefix. Bill's keypad to God's ear.) Without further ado!:

I confess...to telling telemarketers that my wife's deaf and won't be able to hear them

I confess...to telling telemarketers that I don't take telemarketer calls while in the act of taking a telemarketer's call

I confess...that "The Office" is my favorite TV show

I confess...to not knowing much of the Latin in the "Lamb of God" and fake singing the rest

I confess....that I answer memes sometimes because it gives me a feeling of superiority to those who are too cool to answer memes

I confess...to using the workplace printer to print personal stuff (which I've resolved to do no more)

I confess...to wanting to live out in the country but for some wrong reasons, i.e. peace, lack of neighbors and noise, lack of interruptions, etc...

I confess...that parts of the gospels are scarier than any horror movie

I confess...to being unsure where to draw the line between the "ick" of too much personal information proffered to strangers on the 'Net and too little, i.e. in the form of lacking humanity (i.e. Mr. Spock)

I confess...that although hard work purportedly never killed anyone, I normally don't take any chances

I confess...to dismissive, condescending thoughts towards liberal Catholic bloggers/writers

I hereby meme Andrew Sullivan, Jonah Goldberg and Richard Neuhaus. Yeah, I won't be holding my breath...

Various & Sundry

If'n you're like me, you like book reviews. Even better if they're authored by someone you know, if only virtually. Here are Dom's.

A few other miscellaneous thoughts...first, I was recently chagrined to learn (via Kimball's book) that Erich Fromm, author of The Art of Loving (which my dear wife read as an act of love), turned out to be an old fool when it came to embracing '60s politics. Sigh. Growing older seems an exercise in constantly being surprised at how those you looked up to turned out to be idiots. Exhibit A might well be Bill Moyers, although Lileks points out another. Our best and brightest are darn determined to make those of us holding down the middle of the Bell Curve look smart.

So I was poking around amazon.com, suffering from a rare, near fatal, case of delayed book purchasing ("My name is TSO and I've gone 45 days without buying a book." Okay, not literally true but darn close. I had to buy from Requiem books - I simply can't resist a mom 'n pop organization.) So I came across this, and using that wonderful "Search Inside This Book" feature I found just four references to Christ, one of them as a swear word, one as in "Jesus Christ Superstar", two others as basically punchlines to a jokes. There were similar references to "Catholic", all derogatory. Now you could say, "what did you expect?" since it's not a religion book. And the author is Jewish after all. But still it seemed to show the poverty of a Britannica education.

What else? Oh a couple tidbits: from The Corner and a review from Julie of Happy Catholic fame. I was also amused to see Steven mention himself as my number one fan, not something for which there is a lot of competition but I did enjoy seeing it in faux print like that. He also never nuisance-emails so don't believe a word of that.

After the first two Hail Mary’s, my brother joined me, saying the second half of each prayer. The words of his prayers were slurred and hard to decipher. I just began the next prayer when he stopped. We kept going despite several interruptions. After the rosary I said some other prayers and then I sang, "Come Holy Ghost." My brother smiled and he wept a little. I stopped singing and he said, "Don't stop." So I sang again and then he said sweetly, "I can smell incense." Oh! How wonderful the Lord is! "Did you know," I said, " that the fragrance of incense is a sign of the presence of Christ?" This time the Lord was calling my brother –and me – to the kind of faith that surrenders all things. It is a gift to be truly helpless because at that level of helplessness we have no one to turn to except God Almighty and to be in his presence. - Mary Herboth, at the beside of her dying brother

She told me that the monastery had saved her life; that her life fell apart completely eighteen months ago; that she had been a school teacher but was somehow forced to leave her job; that she had spent much of her time since this mysterious catastrophe at the monastery, attending services, staying at the retreat house, trying to find God and to put her life back together again....Her life fell apart. And where do you go when your life falls apart? When your heart is pierced with an impossible grief? You turn to the Cross and make tracks for a monastery...The Christians of the world don't have time for you, or else they are too unforgiving. - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"

I may longer go where I want to go. I may no longer do what I want to do. I may no longer say what I want to say....Yet ever since the moment of profession I have known a freedom like I have never known before. - Br. James Dominic Brent, OP, on joining the Dominicans. Via Disputations

If you think government is primarily a matter of putting “good people” in leadership, you’re not going to properly limit their powers. - Camassia

While Father McBrien claims the middle-of-the-road, Father Rolheiser takes the label-transcending approach of Jim Wallis - "The importance of what's being said here stuck me recently as I read an interview in Sojourners magazine. A young woman, an Episcopalian priest, was being interviewed. She had just published a book with a very strong message challenging us all to be more respectful of nature and was about to set off on a book-promotion tour." Thus the trees that went into the book, Soujourners, and the Catholic Herald did not die in vain. - Terrence Berres of "The Provincial Emails"

I was downstairs putting the finishing touches on dinner (meat loaf, winter squash, vege pasta with artichoke pesto, and home made refried beans). John was upstairs finishing reading something on the computer. He called out to me, "Hey, have you been over to Video Meliora today?" me: "not yet - why?" him: "You're mentioned in the same sentence as Amy Welborn. And it comes from an article in First Things." Since I was downstairs, I grabbed the print edition of First Things out of todays mail pile and proceeded to read God on the Internet by Jonathan V. Last. It's an interesting article, and I was somewhat bemused to have been the first blog actually mentioned by name. Blogging midwives are somewhat of an anomaly anyhow (last time I googled it I only found 4 of us) and a Catholic midwife blog is probably hen's teeth. - Alicia of "Fructus Ventris"

A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue--which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands. - William F. Buckley

"One of his contemporaries recalls that John would frequently scrape his knuckles against the wall while he was conversing with others so that he could keep his attention on the matter at hand and not allow himself to become rapt in prayer." Oh what a gift--to have to distract myself to keep me OUT of prayer. - Steven of "Flos Carmeli" concerning St. John of the Cross

A Dominican priest of our common aquiantance has a theory that the doctrinal and theological sophistication of a Christian sect is inversely proportional to the strictness of its moral codes on drinking. It does seem to be a pretty accurate predictor. In vino veritas and all that. - commenter Marc on Disputations

I confess...to holding back on this blog because I just don't feel like dealing with the comments. - Amy Welborn

Outside the Earth There is No Life... and Outside the Church There is No Salvation? The answer, of course, is simple: [Astronauts] didn't leave the earth; they just brought it with them. While they slept and walked on the moon, they were eating earth's food and breathing earth's air. Everything they had came from back home. So when we say 'outside the earth there is no life,' we are saying that all of the means for survival are found on this planet. And when we say 'outside the Church there is no salvation,' we mean that all of the means of salvation -- doctrines, sacraments, and so on -- are found here, uncorrupted by error. Some of these means can exist outside the visible bounds of the Church. For example, Protestants have most of the Bible, along with two of the seven sacraments. Nevertheless, these things are like the food and water on the Space Shuttle: they're life-giving, but they came from a place where they're far richer, more abundant and complete. - Kevin Knight via Rich Leonardi

I'm #1700 in the ecosystem with 129 unique links ... look out Flos Carmeli, with 130! Drat! I just gave you an extra link! - Speculative Catholic

Let me share with you a moment a list of my own discontents: I didn't beat Mary Shelley to the publishing punch, I haven't published my first novel or first book of poetry, I'm not as wildly popular as Stephen King and Michael Crichton, I'm not as cool and as obscure as James Joyce, I don't have the voice of William Faulkner, I can't express the joy of Gerard Manley Hopkins, I am not living on St. John, or better yet my own Carribean island, I didn't achieve sanctity and sainthood at the age of 24, I didn't write the new Summa, I haven't discovered a new form of prayer, I haven't uncovered a new Catholic Doctrine, heck, I haven't even been able to come up with a new sin. If I were of a mind to, I could wander around and recite Ecclesiastes all day long, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." "There is nothing new under the sun." And boy is the latter true--particularly when it come to discontents--none of them are new--only new to us. - Steven Riddle

Various

Well I have a lot of blog ideas, the only problem being they aren't all that edifying. But as John Denver sang: "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones". (Can you believe he he had the cahoonies to release that lyric as a single? I'm in awe of the man.)

Anyway, I'll lump all of these in one post for reasons that are obvious. First off, many men have the problem of lust. Well, instead of imagining women with their clothes off, go one step further. That should take away lust. (I did warn you about this post didn't I?)

Driving around the city I saw "I'm a proud parent of an honor roll student" bumper sticker and I thought of a few less likely stickers:

"I'm the proud parent of an honor roll student at a declining public school!"

"I'm the proud parent of a Pig Latinist!"

"I'm the proud parent of a honor roll student taking advantage of grade inflation."

"My son always dresses for gym class"

Where's that rimshot? Oh yeah.

Heaven

I recall the scent of slow-down
unlogged, unblogged time,
time for which no account would be held
though not to be confused with no-account time
...and the golden crowns fell like leaves.

It was a whiskey river sun
zenith’d, Atlas shrugging
'lucky you' casting joy
minting glints as Adam's
youth and graceful arc
returned at last.

He jests at scars that ne'er felt a meme

Alicia has meme'd me...

1. Write three things for which we are grateful to God for in this past liturgical year.
* for the glimpses of Love
* the solace of the community of saints
* our new pope

2. Write three ways in which we hope to improve our relationship with God in this coming liturgical year.
* less distracted prayer
* attitude of service
* openness to Transcendence

3. I pass this on to St. Blog's at large

Fictional Monday

Hank Keller grew up in a Roman Catholic home where devotion to the Blessed Mother was in the very air they breathed. He felt especially close to her because he was especially close to his own mother. A mama's boy he was, so the inclination was natural.

He said the rosary through fierce distractions, some so annoying that he would clench the beads in self-disgust and tears would form: "I will not be lukewarm!" he muttered, "anything but lukewarm!"

Years passed and he went away to school and his relationship with the Virgin seemed to alter. She seemed less his mother than his chaste girlfriend and he purchased a small picture of a fresh-faced Mary, looking not unlike the girl next door. They would go together through this relentless storm of adolescence, this constant struggle for acceptance.

Time passed and the gap between his experiences and that of his friends widened. He remembers asking, with some bitterness, why she did so little to help him. "Do you even appreciate what I'm doing? A virgin when everyone else is having sex?" The silence seemed deafening, impervious as he was to the irony, or perhaps he couldn't listen for the blood that beat at his temples. Battles were won but mostly lost.

He came back to her, but this time his perception was not one of girlfriend or mother but of wonderment at the great esteem all the great figures of Christendom paid her. "Who are you Mary?" he asked instead of "Who are you for me?". He took down his old picture of Mary's sweet, Western, girl-next-door face and hung the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This seemed of more historical value, more of who Mary is, a way to get closer to who she is if not in body then in spirit.