Various

You can’t listen to Hank Williams Sr’s I Saw the Light and not feel the thrill. And yet he was a troubled soul. Is it merely the addiction? Or was the addiction a sign of a deeper illness? Chicken or the egg? He reminds me of Jack Kerouac. At the end of his life, the beat poet was throwing up vodka while reading the Bible and National Review. It’s a banal observation, but tragic ends are so depressing and scream “why?”. A friend of my brother committed suicide last week. Why? 36 years old, married, with two foster children. He didn’t want to go to Vegas with the group back in May, the first sign (in hindsight) my brother noted.
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Went to the annual Communist Fest Friday. I didn’t enjoy it but went out of a sense of duty. Communist Fest (actually called Comfest) is the annual weekend at a large park in downtown Columbus where progressive types celebrate. It’s a chance for me to experience the Other, where the other is the anti-bourgeouis. The music is rock, the politics frightening. Come to think of it, it functions well as one of those Halloween horror parks. I really wasn’t sure why I was there since I don’t listen to much rock anymore and if I want political horror shows I can just bring up the Daily Kos website.
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I recall it was the late ‘90s and Ham o’ Bone was calling a radio station pretending to be a Vietnam veteran.

“When I was in ‘Nam,” he said, and a chill ran through my bones because the authenticity of his voice was undeniable. I couldn’t do it in a hundred years. If I did, I’d probably say “When I was in ‘nam” and then start to giggle. But Bone knew how to keep a straight voice.

“Got gut-shot by Charlie and…”. Turned out he knew the talk show host and all was well, but it never lessened the amount of creativity it took to come up with his war stories. Ham was always the plot man. When we co-wrote our novella, a science fiction romp titled “Steinberg!”, it was always Bone who soberly wanted me to move the plot along. We’d take turns. He wrote his couple pages and then I’d email it back to him with my pages appended. But I had a hard time advancing the plot in a serious way. Updike was my model and I wanted only to describe, in excrutiating detail, the flora and fauna and physical characteristics of amatory couples. In fact there was an element of sabotage as I’d tired of it early and often. Bone would leave the characters in a situation of grave danger and I would somehow manage to find them swapping saliva.

I’ve decided in the interim that God is contrarian, on the basis that everything I said I would not do I ended up doing. Taken to the extreme, this means that I should take write plot and Bone should write detail...
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My lust for travel increases exponentially during the summer months. During the fall and winter I’m as hibernatory as a bear. But in the summer even the smallest bike ride can trigger travelin' pangs. Even in the suburbs there is much to see. The variations of houses, the flowers and gardens and half-seen arbors in the backyard, the doors, the cornices, the statuary and the trees. Little things…like a house with her all her windows flung wide open – one can imagine the scent of the outdoors in that house.

Today was the “Haus & Garten” tour in beautiful German Village. And I missed it, due in part for the good reason of my father-in-law’s situation, but it’s funny that I’ve never been to a Haus & Garten. I’ve missed a premiere travel opportunity not fifteen miles from my house. Such is life. We live on an oasis of art and literature and watch American Idol and read The DaVinci Code.

(Mostly) Fictional Friday (on a Monday)

His writing life began by virtue of being an inveterate collector. At age eight, hiking in the woods, he'd pick up rocks and lift up bark and whatnot in a hopes of taking something home in order to extend the experience into the morrow. He wasn't yet conscious that collectors don’t have experiences for experiences’ sake but for the re-experiential purposes: a photo, baseball card, a book.

A natural outcome of the collecting mentality was to preserve travel memories in the amber of a journal despite the fact that he rarely went back and to re-read what he’d written. But he had great need to preserve the experience in writing as a hedge against a "travel famine".

Only permanency was charismatic. He liked the experience of things but didn’t take them too seriously due to their short shelf life. They vaporized upon contact, so ‘twas better to collect some artifact that could be referred to repeatedly in the future. Later he would begin to believe the rather obvious fact that life on earth was itself extremely impermanent.

Maybe there were three kinds of people, he thought. Those who live for the moment. Those who collect for an earthly future. And those who collect for eternity.

Remarkable Story

My father-in-law is in the hospital. Fortunately he is doing well and is out of immediate danger. The subject of prayer came up and the nurse overhead and told of a recent fiery car crash.

He was injured to the point of near death and was rescued and lifeflighted.

He reported to the nurse that he had felt himself leave his body for a time. He had floated above the cars behind him and in the first two he heard people complaining about having to wait. In the third car he heard the woman praying for him and so he remained with her.

He remembered the license plate number and told the nurse. Police cooperated in finding the owner of that third car because the doctor asked them to. She was asked to come to the hospital for a reason they couldn't share. The injured patient introduced himself and his family and thanked her for her prayers.

Wow!

They say people in the medical profession believe in God more many other professions (doctors are far more likely to be believers than scientists) and one can see why.

"How Shall I Know This?" vs "How Will This Happen?"

The gospel reading for today's remembrance of the birth of John the Baptist is from Luke. And in the first chapter there is the sharp - if initially subtle - difference between the response of Zechariah and Mary to good news from the angel Gabriel.

Zechariah doubts and asks, "How shall I know this?" which is the same language Abram asked God in Genesis 15:8 when Abram responds to the promise of numerous descendents with, "How can I know that shall I possess it?". In other words, both are asking of GOd how can I know you'll deliver? But at this point Abraham is Abram; he hasn't been called yet and lacks the covenant and his doubt isn't held against him. Zechariah, on the other hand, was a high priest, one of the few who could visit the Holy of Holies.

God's response is different in each case. With Abram, He responded by making a covenant with him and by working a great sign, bringing down fire from Heaven. Zechariah, on the other hand, already had the covenant and its promise. He was expected to have faith and did not and was struck mute for three days (a comfortingly mild punishment although more difficult for some than for others: today not blogging for three days might constitute a worse punishment).

Mary, on the other hand, inquires how the plan will enfold. The phrasing is different: It's not "how will I know what you are saying will happen?" but "how will this happen?". A big difference.

What is particularly interesting in this is how it relates to the as yet upbaptized Camassia, who seems half-way between the religious Zechariah (who was given the advantage of growing up in the Covenant) and the unchurched Abram (to the extent one can use "church" in that pre-Covenant age). So she's stuck between whether she should know better like Zechariah or whether she should receive a sign like Abram, although all of this is probably presumptuous for me to speculate on as I don't know her and I may be mis-reading her anyway.

Pope Benedict...

...on devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Quality Blogging

...over at The Inn at the End of the World. See especially the art, pictures, and text of a post about St. Thomas More's remains.

An Authority Unto Herself

In the quote below, a liberal female Episcopalian blogger experiences the cognitive dissonance of being led where she does not want to go by someone of her own gender. For perhaps the first time she has to choose between the message and the messenger and between two ideas she holds. One is that it doesn't matter what the message is as long as it's a woman she can identify with (in this case Bishop Jefferts Schori) doing the "messengering". The other is that only the message matters. Fascinating:

I was shocked and annoyed by the resolution we got. I was feeling like the Presiding Bishops were shoving it down our throats. When Bishop Jefferts Schori was speaking I also had this bizarre experience. For the very first time in my life I was really feeling invested in authority. Here was this woman in a very high office and I felt compelled to listen to her and her office. I've never in my life had that experience. It was weird and confusing because I was totally not in line with what she was asking of us.

She didn't say how she ended up voting concerning the resolution B-033.

Ham o' Bone...

...seems to be getting a bit big for his britches (metaphorically speaking only). So place tongue in cheek for this rejoinder! :-)

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Food Song

I weigh two twenty two
a number hard to chew
but do not feel dismay
I'm just big-boned they say.

Of veggies I'll have none
I'd 'druther a Hahn pun
Or a cold and drizzly run
For of pizza I say 'yum'!

Call me quite a sinner
don't call me late to dinner
I'd rather not be thinner
if the food tastes like paint thinner.

Hitler ate no meat
and barely filled his seat
While Aquinas was rotund
His holiness fecund.

I'd rather be the latter
even though I would be fatter
guess I still can't be a satyr
when it comes to chocolate batter.

Where I Come From

I tried this meme, via Studeo, but kind of went back and forth between humor and seriousity and so gave it up.

I am from rotary dial telephones, Guinness Stout and Quisp.

I am from the Great Ohio River valley, where from under every streambed rock there's a crawdad.

I am from the poplar, rose, clementine...oh, nevermind.

Standing Firm

Sarah Hey writes movingly, comparing the Episcopalian cause to a "little stone bridge":

For some very strange reason, a number of us -- a small unit -- are being told to fight for or over this bridge. It is a pitched battle, full of hurled insults and cyber bloodshed, tactical actions, retreats by some [or perhaps calls back to their camp to await further orders], logistics and communications challenges, going awol, unexpected heroism, despair, and much more. We keep waiting for further orders, but so far the same command keeps reaching us -- to hold the bridge...
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There's a reason why I love the excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt's Speech at the Sorbonne which I posted so many days ago. I struggle with practical action and love more the world of ideas and creativity. And as a person who has tended to avoid conflict at all costs, I am certainly similar to that young lord in my favorite line of that speech's excerpt, who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.".

So we ask the question. Why on earth are we out here fighting over this little stone bridge?

I will leave the theologizing and the philosophizing and the issues of Truth and the gospel to other minds, for now, although I have some arguments along those lines. Instead I'll address the question with some very practical responses.

First, we must take note that our Worthy Opponents are in the thick of the battle too. They seem to want this little stone bridge with a great deal of fervor, and all of us must ponder that fact and speculate as to why. I won't speculate, other than to say that we are fighting over this little stone bridge because it is greatly desired by others. That in itself is noteworthy.

I suspect that this particular little bridge is of interest for a number of reasons -- it is little, for one, and thus easily captured. It is crumbling, so that is attractively weak, yet still carries the troops from one bank of the river to the other and so is a useful vehicle. And for a number of decades its bridgekeepers and watchers were somewhat . . . slumberous, shall we say.

Second, once ground is taken, and territory conquered, battle-hardened units don't generally set up fine, plush camps, smoke pipes, and cook gourmet food. They don't establish themselves there . . . they rest a little, tend their wounds, and move on.

In other words, they advance their flag, and seek other territory to conquer. The little stone bridge over which they had fought so vigorously the day before, they now use as a launching pad, as a base of operations, from which to field more forces. The leader may establish a base camp, a field operation camp, but he only does so in order to send more troops into battle farther out into the woods, and the fields beyond.

There is a reason, for instance, why the national secular media presents two sides to the Episcopal church issue, rather than *one side* and that is because full rulership of the Episcopal church has not at all been fully established. The church is not able to "speak its prophetic voice" to the culture, without another voice piping up from within saying "that's not true and here's why" -- or, to say it another way, "we're not dead yet". If you think this is not a source of endless frustration to the powers-that-be -- that they are unable to make pronouncements without having that very annoying voice *from within* clogging up their news articles -- then I urge you to ponder just how vexed *you* would be if in your organization, your corporation, the same thing were happening. Most such "annoying voices" are your outside competitors, not your internal employees! ; > )
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What about those who have left this particular little stone bridge or are thinking about leaving?

First, I say go with God, brother or sister in Christ, if you receive other orders. You are a worthy ally, and no doubt we shall meet again on some other field or plain. And second, I hope that you learned whatever it was you were supposed to learn while fighting this battle -- that is, as long as you were fighting it. Because if you were sitting under a shady oak tree and sipping dry martinis when you suddenly heard the sound of warfare a few yards downstream, and having just recently noted the battle, have now suddenly discovered new orders to other more comfortable climes . . . I somehow suspect that those orders have been forged and that you have not at all learned what you were meant to learn.

I am reminded of an early blog comment some time back in 2004, I believe, when a man posted on some site the happy news that he was "outta here" and on to a much better place. He could finally cease all of this silly, and useless fighting over an unworthy trivial corrupt Episcopal church, because he had crossed the Tiber and joined the Roman Catholic church.

He had not learned a crucial lesson, one that I suspect that God wants us all to learn.

I considered a response -- it would have been somewhat cruel, I am sorry to say -- but before I could do so, someone else had piped up with a comment along these lines:

"Welcome, brother. We hope you find rest and refreshment here on the shores of the Tiber. It is a beautiful place. Cast yourself down on its grassy banks and rest a while. . . . . But after you've rested -- and please don't do so for very long -- get up, strap back on your armor, and get back into the battle. We have a whole lot of fighting to do in this church and it is under assault as well."

Sweet! ; > )

But that leads me to what I think is a lesson I've been learning and that is . . . you're not going to leave the battle for long. Wherever you go -- there you are. And there'll be something fierce, something hideous, something demoralizing, something that seems doomed all over again, to fight your heart out for.

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A commenter named Ramon follows up:

I watched this battle from across the Tiber as I am an orthodox Roman Catholic but let me tell you, as you so aptly pointed out in your analogy above, this is a battle and indeed whether one is a orthodox Anglican or an orthodox Roman Catholic, we indeed are fighting much the same battle. From my perspective, you and many other folks are truly fighting a valiant rear-guard action and I am cheering you on.

At West Point we studied many battles in which “a little stone bridge” was at stake. The 300 Spartans at Thermopyle died to a man, including their King Leonidas, not because they thought they could defeat 20,000 Persians, but because they had committed themselves to slow the Persian advance, their own little stone bridge. They did die but what they showed the world was that an “irresistable” force was not so irresistable in the face of resolute courage and determination and that lesson was well learned by the rest of the Greeks. Darius, the Persian King, didn’t last very long in the Greek peninsula and while the battle was “lost” (I would argue that strategically it won the war by breaking the Persian myth of invincibility).

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 

   

Inspired by this, this, and this...

Two Out Rally

Hurling bullet-fire he,
Billy Wagner came to see
if he could get the Redlegs out
and two he did, that dirty lout.

Ninety-eight his speed was clocked,
surely 5-4 was locked
in the ninth the Reds last chance
bases empty I watch askance.

But the Mighty Wagner threw
the count went full, a walk was drew
another pass, a small dink hit
and hope arrived, the bases lit.

Shootout at the green corral
oh-and-two on a strike and foul,
a single stroke to separate
the sheeps from goats at this late date.

Ninety-nine came a speeding train
but Phillips swung his fragile cane
and crack! the ball went in the field
and vict'ry for the Reds was sealed.

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And while we're on the subject...

Fine Art Friday   (via Summa Mamas)



This mosaic shows the great "Big Red Machine" of the 1970s. If that ain't fine art then I don't know what is!

Slate piece...

...on Garrison Keillor.

Patrick...

...has a moving post on the poison of too much irony and cynicism. (Me: "Lord, take away my irony and cynicism, but just not yet.")

Randomized Thoughts

courtesy Knights of Columbus	Let's raise a figurative glass (though it is noon somewhere) to St. Thomas More! If he's not the only lawyer in Heaven, it would definitely have to be an exclusive group. One would think the temptation to perform jesuitical jujitsu in order to avoid a beheading would be nearly overwhelming but the saint did not succumb.

One great advantage of God having come to earth is that it helps us discount whatever negativity we feel. If we look at the problem of evil, or natural disasters for instance, we know that Christ knew of them and it didn’t alter his love for the Father. We know that even personal suffering didn’t alter that equation either (i.e. the Cross). We know that he read and inhaled the Old Testament and there was nothing in it that shook his faith. He had no problem reconciling the difficult passages therein. There was no Marcion disconnect between the Old & his own teachings that would form the basis of the New. There is great comfort in all of that.
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It’s a time of madness. The summer equinox. The heat has come and it is so humid that walking outside is like walking into a wall. I am full of deep yearnings and not just for sex. No I have a yearning to write, "write like the wind". There are moments of beauty in unexpected moments. Driving to work today I was floored by the undulating hills of clover next to Neil Avenue. There was the grace note of a tall dark blue flower against the background of this happy flowering pink/purple clover. And it feels like being indoors is a crime against nature. Ol' Jim Curley & Jeff Culbreath are saying their told-ya-so's. It seems a crime not to notice, but summer will go along without us whether the lightning bugs are appreciated and the hammock is bowed and the hummingbirds are spotted. The days already begin to shorten. Early summer is shot through with wistfulness. What part does nostalgia play in the Christian’s life? The bible is not friendly towards it (look at Lot’s wife). What part does sentiment play?
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An odd thing about blogging is the disproportionality it tends to encourage. I pray much for an ex-Catholic blogger who has become a Mormon. Why? I don’t even know her. How odd is that? How odd that I pray for her more than I do some of my own in-laws and family members?
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The great challenge is to bravely note other people’s blind spots and not feel a crisis of confidence concerning how gaping your own might be. You can't know your blind spot else it wouldn't be called 'blind'. You must go forward in a Pickett’s Charge, unafraid of being wrong. Reading of fallen evangelists like Jim Bakker discombobulates me because it shows how short-lasting the Scriptural imperatives adhere to us. James writes in his epistle that we forget who we are, and that is so. The spiritual evaporates quickly without prayer and the gospel.
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I go to an ultra-orthodox parish downtown a lot. There are long lines for Confession and more devotions that you can shake a stick at. And the sermon is often one concerning the besetting sin of the orthodox: self-righteousness. And I had to laugh because - get this - during one of those sermons I'm thinking, "it's good that at an orthodox parish we hear about self-righteousness. I wonder whether at the liberal parish down the street they're hearing about sin and heterdoxy." and I imagined not, that that's the difference between the orthodox and the heterodox. You simply can't make it up. I felt self-righteous during a sermon about self-righteousness!
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I saw one of the Episcopalian ministers identify herself on her blog profile as an ENFS or whatever those Myers-Briggs initials are. I sometimes think about what would happen if Jesus say about Myers-Briggs. Would he give a pass to introverts? Would “feeler” types be given a doctrinal pass since logic might not be their forte? Would “judgers” be less judged on judging? Maybe, but that's also what grace is for.
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Regarding the Episcopalian madness, I do feel sorry that St. Paul's passage about marrying if you would otherwise be given over to lust can't apply to homosexuals. Which is why they are called to be saints. But the amazing way in which the liberals in that church have demanded their own way reminds one of what Josef Pieper wrote decades ago:

There seems nowadays some strong imperative to conduct ourselves as though eros really were a kind of absolute authority. There are those who feel that they are right, are carrying out a kind of religious duty "in the service of eros" - even though they may be deceiving a spouse, betraying a friend, abusing hospitality, destroying the happiness of others, or abandoning their own children. Then everything appears as a "sacrifice" painfully offered upon the altar of love.

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So what else is in the hopper? Let me look in the discontinued items bin. (Please make shuffling noise.) Oh yes. Don't tell Steven Riddle, because he could change this in a heartbeat by adding thousands of books to his librarything collection, but the current standings as far as books we share in common with Amy Welborn goes: TSO (40), sriddle (34), TLSouthard (31), scipio (29) where TLSouthard is MamaT of "Summa Mamas" fame and Scipio is he who blogs here. Of course, it's not a competition so please no wagering.

What else from the bargain bin? Here's something from Right Angle blog Ohioans may be interested in concerning gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland's view of religion.