St. Teresa of Ávila & the Beauty Cultists

Rebecca Mead writes in The New Yorker of all places:

“On the Upper East Side of New York City, the body and the face are considered to be something like a garden. . . . They are to be tended and cleaned, cared for every day in the hope that the buds will remain dewy,” Kuczynski writes, employing the same metaphor used by St. Teresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-century mystic and monastic reformer, whose autobiography called upon the beginner in prayer to think of himself “as of one setting out to make a garden in which the Lord is to take His delight.” The women Kuczynski interviews for whom cosmetic surgery is both a passion and a pastime are beauty nuns, dedicated to the discipline of personal physical reformation.

Unlike St. Teresa, of course, Kuczynski’s beauty nuns are interested in the garden of themselves for its own glory, not for the glory of God.
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Like certain strains of Christian mysticism, cosmetic surgery is founded on a notion of human perfectibility, although the means of achieving perfection, and the rewards thereof, are the opposite of those in a Christian theology. If for St. Teresa perfection required transcending the allures of the material and the sensual, adherents of the cult of plastic surgery undergo surgical mortification of the flesh in order to embrace the sensual life more fully. Ultimately, Kuczynski argues, what the beauty junkie is pursuing, and what our culture values most, is not simply aesthetic improvement but the preservation of apparent youthfulness at any cost.

For Your Entertainment...

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Ian Frazier on buying books.

Degrees of Home

Look o'er the election results in this morning's newspaper I noticed that those who I voted for got swamped in the county I now reside but won handily in the county from which I came from. Makes me nostalgic for home, since birds of a feather and all that. It's alienating to see so many around me voting for the party of death.

In a way, more home would be a place I'd never been, 1820s America, when Noah Webster could write a dictionary that was suffused with his Christianity. Imagine a time before the great bifurcation, a time when you might be edified while doing something as secular as consulting a dictionary. There seems a greater naturalness to religious faith then, a lack of self-consciousness in the public sphere. The New Yorker puts it: "Webster's faith shines through on nearly every page, even under the most unlikely bushels." He would use words in a sentence after defining them, such as these for love: "The love of God is the first duty of man....The Christian loves his bible".

Finally, the least familiar home, the one ear hath not heard nor eye seen, is the one towards which we are journeying.

Live-Blogging the Elections...     so you don't have to

9:34PM: My job tonight is to trigger schadenfreude in any lurking liberals. This is only fair since they've provided the same to me over the past six years. But so far the biggest surprise isn't anything on the political playing field but in MSNBC's choice of anchors - the excreable Keith Olbermann. The media double standard continues: FOX would be laughed at if they invited O'Reilly on their set and yet Olbermann, who is far more insane than O'Reilly, is front & center. Plans to watch MSNBC are now stillborn. As Stephen Sprueill wrote recently:

...Olbermann either wonders aloud with him whether Republicans even know how stupid and corrupt they are, or impatiently asks him why the Democrats aren’t doing more to topple the despotic “Mr. Bush” and his Orwellian cohort...

When asked recently whether his anti-Bush tirades had boosted his numbers, Olbermann told USA Today, “You can’t really put on a ‘traditional newscast’ anymore, certainly not on cable. And to some degree a fervently expressed opinion is going to be good TV one way or another.”

But perhaps it’s for the best that, in the three and a half years since Olbermann took over as the host of Countdown, he has fully abandoned his stated goal of anchoring a sober news broadcast and become instead a shameless presenter of opinion as fact. It’s always better to know where the crazy guy lives — that way, you can avoid his house.

9:40PM Over at FOX Michelle Malkin looks and sounds subdued while reporting on the blogosphere. I mention this just so I can report via the blogosphere about a blogger reporting on the blogosphere. Feel free to report on my reporting of her reporting of others' reporting.

9:45PM: Looks like the House of Reps is gone, gone with the wind, which on the bright side will save me the $100 I offered Ham o' Bone as a way of saying that there was no way the Republicans could hold the House. I'll shed few tears: imagine, for a minute, a Congress without reason or accountability and what you would have is semi-close to the latest House. So I'm not crying over spilled House seats. Certainly my own rep, Deborah Pryce, was squishy on the life issues.

9:49PM:: My wife asks whether NPR's Juan Williams is black or Hispanic. I say black but she says she doesn't know any blacks named "Juan" and I'd never thought of that before and said so. I say maybe he's half-black and half-Hispanic.

9:52PM: I go to the refrigerator for a St. Pauli Girl since my nerves are on edge partially due to the election but far more so due to the fact that our dog ate a bunch of dental floss. They can die from it, so we'd just spent two hours giving him doses of hydrogen peroxide in an effort to invoke vomiting. The guy was a gamer, his stomach heaved and drooling stalagtites formed on the edges of his lips, but he never bowed to the porcelain god or canine equivalent. Say what you want but the ol' boy can handle his peroxide. We'll have to take our chances. Felt bad we put him through that without result.

9:55PM: "Speaker Pelosi" is supposed to inspire fear and loathing in conservatives, but she recently pledged on 60 Minutes not to crucify Bush with subpeonas and impeachment trials. Whether she'll hold to that remains to be seen, but it's a hopeful sign that she's a grown-up. There are precious few of those on the Hill.

9:55:28PM: (burp)

9:57PM: Santorum is out and I have mixed emotions. I never understood why he actively campaigned for Arlen "Never Met an Abortion He Couldn't Support" Spectre over a pro-life challenger. Did the Republicans sell their soul at that moment and it was all downhill from there?

9:58 PM: Looks like VA is going to go all night long (sing like Lionel Richie), and that could be the pivotal seat in determining control of the Senate. Given that, I think I'll put some Celtic music on the stereo and end the live-blogging. Maybe I'll work on the next few words of my novel. Or offer something like Eric of the Daily Eudemon, who writes with disarming honestly: "I just want to know what most guys want to know: Can we declare ourselves a women and hang out in the ladies’ bathroom?" That's the sort of honest blogger I'd originally set out to be, and look where I am now? Slumming around in politics.

The sporadically updated parodic blog's updated

...with a recap of voting-transmitted diseases.

A Bucolic Scene

Are you "over-journalized"? Too much reading of political posts and columns? Does the phrase "Wrong for Ohio" ring in your head from the hangover of too many political ads? Does the sight of "Yes on Issue 3" signs benumb you because you can't dislodge the thought in the reptile part of your brain that someone might just vote 'yes' on Issue 3 simply because they saw a sign at the intersection of two busy roads on Election Day? Is voting like a football game where you have to make a lot of noise so the other team's quarterback can't call his plays?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes then gaze on this awhile:



This is my new favorite Luseian painting. Seems he traded his blogging obsession for a painting one.

Perhaps everyone longs for some surety of the effectiveness of communication; looks for some sign that the message has been received and acknowledged; looks for some hint that love sent out is returned. In the matter of prayer, such longings are not to be trusted. In fact, in the matter of prayer, such longings are a temptation away from prayer. If one enters prayer with the notion that one needs to "get something out of it," one will fail every time because there will come a time when nothing sensible does come out of it. But there are several reasons why this attitude is wrong. If someone were invited to a friend's house for a quiet cup of tea (coffee) and a sit out on the back porch watching the world go by, most would not immediately ask, "What will I get out of it?" - Steven of Flos Carmeli

Paul rates his afflictions as "slight" compared to the joy of God's kingdom (4;17). Nevertheless, he does not give the impression of being a person who finds afflictions easy to bear (4:8-9). A man who sometimes feels "crushed" and driven almost to despair (1:8) has not found a formula for rising above his problems. Paul does not float peacefully over troubled waters. Sometimes, perhaps, the evidence of God's power at work in him is simply that he doesn't throw in the towel. A philosopher in Paul's day named Epictetus wrote that hardships show what a person truly is -- they expose the person's inner character. In Paul's view, difficulties reveal not so much our inner character as that of God. Our hardships are an opportunity for God to show his power (4:7, 10). This is not to deny the importance of human strength of character. From the hardships that Paul endured, it is obvious that he was a man of determination, endurance, and courage. But Paul recognizes that such human qualities are not enough. On a recent occasion, he admitted, he would have despaired if God had not intervened (1:8-9). He talks about God's encouragement frequently (1:4-7; 7:6-7; 13) because he needs it. - from book "2 Corinthians: Power in Weakness (Six Weeks With the Bible)" via Julie of "Happy Catholic"

I think that if not my own lifetime then during my children's, there will again be North American martyrs. - paraphrase of what Scott Hahn said at Coming Home Conference

I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?...Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. - ex-jihadist Dr. Tawfik Hamid, former member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a banned terrorist organization, as quoted in Canada's National Post

When I hear things like “You just want to take us back to pre-Vatican II days of pay, pray and obey!” I think, what is wrong with paying, praying, and obeying? We should all be generous with our resources in God's service; we should all come to Him daily in prayer; and we should all desire to be formed in obedience to His Word and His Church. The only negative about the phrase is that we should not imagine that our service to God is limited to those things, although they are fundamental to our lives in the Church. - Henry of "A Plumbline in the Wind"

Paul Thigpen has a great new book out called Last Words: Final Thought of Catholic Saints and Sinners. On his deathbed, [King Henry VIII] cried, "All is lost. Monks, monks, monks. So, now, all is gone--empire, body, soul." Was this the final cry of a man who was lost, or was it expressed as a final regret for his violent and pitiless life? God only knows...If we are commanded to pray for our enemies we had best pray for him too. - Dwight Longnecker

Ken Burns, in his award-winning Civil War series, failed even to mention the existence of Catholic nuns among the nursing corps -- they comprised at least one-half and possibly as much as two-thirds of the nurses who took part in the Civil War -- certainly a fact worth noting. When confronted with this glaring omission, he responded lamely, "I couldn't do everything." -- John Vidmar, OP, The Catholic Church Through the Ages: A History

Precisely because he is an intelligent person, [Rod Dreher] knew that Catholicism is right, and he needed an intellectual justification for doing what he was doing, and the only possible way to get that justification would be to call into question the teachings of the Church...To begin questioning how an ecumenical council arrives at its dogmatic teachings is the doorstep to heterodoxy, not orthodoxy. Granted, the Orthodox Churches don't recognize the validity of all of the Ecumenical Councils, but you can bet your bottom dollar they wouldn't tolerate judging the dogmatic pronouncements of the ones they do accept on the basis of personal, private judgments about the manner in which the dogmata were arrived at! Is Dreher going to become a student of ancient history now...Will he discover that the doctrine of the Trinity was forced through by a suspicious vote? Will he discover that physical force was brought into play in the debates over monothelitism? Perhaps he will found his own church someday that all of the other purists can come to. - Scott Carson of "Examined Life"

Fr. Ryland concluded his remarks with a very moving reflection: that as a protestant his personal relationship with Christ was always on his terms, because he was the one defining what his own beliefs were; but as a Catholic, his personal relationship with Christ is on Christ's terms, because Christ has defined those terms via His Church. Having experienced the same phenomenon in my own life as a convert, I had a lump in my throat. - Jay Anderson of "Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate"

saint gemma, the loveliest and gentlest bearer of the stigmata * saint teresa of avila, who reminds us that there are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers - some of Smock's (summa mamas) favorite saints

Nicht zu Sure

Of course it is possible that we are stricter on ourselves than we are on our politicians.
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It'll be interesting to see if Bob Novak is right when he says:

Democrats are set to gain 19 House seats, two Senate seats, and five governorships in tomorrow's elections.

DAY 1: 1 today / 16,057 goal / .00006%


"Write son, write like the wind!"

Well if it's November then it's National Novel Writing Month, and I think it is high time I started my novel if only for therapeutic purposes*. I haven't decided on a title yet. Here's what I've written so far:

The

Stayed tuned tomorrow for words two and three...
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* - "Writing is a form of therapy" - Graham Greene

Beating a Dead Horse But...

...fine post from Kevin Miller of Exceptional Marriages concerning the coming election - via Curt Jester, who has a good post of his own on the subject.

In an earlier post I called Dispatch columnist Joe Hallet a "cynical lefty", but that was probably succumbing to hyperbole. Hallet wrote recently: "If the polls are correct, [the Republican] party is going down in a big way Tuesday and good public servants including Sen. Mike DeWine and U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce could be swept away in the onslaught." A cynical lefty wouldn't call Dewine and Pryce "good public servants". Of course it's coming at a time when the fate of Dewine and Pryce are probably sealed.

Eucharistic Adoration

My 11-year old niece visited over the weekend and after Mass saw a sign-up sheet for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. She asked what that was and whether it was the "8th sacrament", which is certainly no reflection on her since she's a very bright girl. (She goes to a Catholic school by the way.)

A little googling led me to a pretty good summary of what Adoration is all about right here within St. Blog's...

Elsewhere:

One time when Blessed Mother Teresa was visiting in our country, a group of American women asked her what they could do to help her in her work. Blessed Mother Teresa replied, "The greatest help they could give her would be to spend one hour each week in silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament". That is good advice for us too.

Election Day...

...is tomorrow, and it's going to be interesting to see whether the conservative base of the Republican party turns out.

It's interesting because there's a natural tension in conservatism: on one hand we have a tendency to see things in black and white which means we'd rather not choose between shades of gray. But the other hand we understand that we live in a fallen world that is incapable of being perfected outside of Christ (or of being perfected at all according to non-theist conservatives), and thus can ill-afford to be purists. (Most of us, self included, are stricter with our politicians than we are with ourselves.)

A co-worker who labels himself as an independent said he's voting for Democrats because he wants to send President Bush a message. This strikes me as a sign of immaturity in the way a man who, after an argument with his wife, kicks his dog. I told my co-worker that 2004 was the time to "punish" George Bush. He said he tried, but this is the only way he can now get the message to Bush that he thinks he "should be hung".

Parody blog...

...updated with more silliness.

Hi-laire

At the conference, Marcus Grodi mentioned in an aside that he had been misquoted in a book against EWTN. A book against EWTN? This sounded interesting, so naturally I went to amazon.com to check it out.

And - if you can believe this - according to the amazon reviews EWTN is being criticized therein for being not traditional enough. Catholic Light ably and succintly tells the story here.

If that's the worse you can say about EWTN then EWTN is doing a fine job. Reminds me of atheist Chris Hitchens criticizing Mother Teresa for not being able to vouch for the sanctity of the souls of all those giving her donations -- if that's the worst thing he can say about Mother then let the canonization begin.