Hearing God's Callings

"Why does God have to be so elusive about communicating our callings?"

How much do these repeated acts of love–flowing out from the papacy now for over thirty years–matter? Do they make a small dent in a hardened, modernized world? Do they re-shape everything? Are they beautiful but ultimately quixotic? My opinion tends to vacillate among those three choices, but more and more lately, I’ve been tending to think they re-shape everything. - Eric Scheske of "The Daily Eudemon" on the papal visit

If you don't go through the whole bible at one time or another, you miss so much context! A Maronite priest I know refers to the scriptures as a "seamless garment". - commenter on Disputations

Many elite thinkers on the theological left have learned how to surround their beliefs in a kind of nuanced theological fog that serves as a protective barrier. Insiders know what the symbolic word clusters mean, but this strategy prevents many people in the pews — the kind of ordinary people who write checks — from understanding what is going on. There are exceptions, of course, such as the retired Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong of Newark, who never used a fly swatter when a baseball bat would do. - blogger at "Get Religion"

Knowing you'll have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations. -- Vladimir Nabokov

We labored at those kayak paddles like galley slaves. If we craved ease, why did we act so? It was not ease we sought at all, but action that we wanted. Action for it's own sake, because the idea of destination was slipping away from us...I believed completely that the wilderness heals, if only because it is one of the few places on earth that simply leaves you alone to be yourself. - David Smith in "The Healing Journey"

Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. - H.L. Mencken via Rich Leonardi

Yes, in fact I am so baffled by it that I think that it might be Uncle Screwtape's cleverest trick. Lewis is very good at understanding sin, and that is the strength of The Screwtape Letters. However, he is completely lost as to what to do about it, as is evidenced by his utter bafflement as to sacramental grace and his death extra ecclesia. So, yes, if you need to glean insights on the nature of sin, Lewis is invaluable...I went from being a Stalinist dialectical materialist to the logical next step of libertarian dialectical materialist (still believe in class struggle, but figure out which class is actually going to win in that model). It was reading Thomas Aquinas (first via Umberto Eco) that I came to the conclusion that God existed. At that point it boiled down to Mohammedanism, Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy. But it is a long story... - Erik Keilholtz commenting on Happy Catholic on C.S. Lewis' failure to convert and then his own conversion

Christmas is not the day the Son of God began to share our life. It is the day He began to share our death. From the moment of birth, we are dying, cell by cell. Most of the cells are replaced, and in childhood at least, many more are born, but it is at birth that we begin to die. If Jesus Christ was true man, as well as true God, as the Church confesses, then at His birth He began to experience physical death. On Good Friday, He would experience it to the full, and on Easter He would conquer it for us forever...On Christmas we prepare for Good Friday, and thus for Easter. That is what we will be celebrating.- Henry Dieterich of "A Plumbline in the Wind"

Tonight, I have nothing to do. After tonight? Social, service, or family obligations nine out of the next ten days... But I will prevail! By the power of Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking, a few pale ales, and–in a pinch–a chemical lobotomy, I will make it through...A reader wrote yesterday, asking if I give up beer for Lent. The answer is “no,” and the reason is pretty obvious: I can’t be hungover on Mondays. (For my non-Catholic readers: Sundays aren’t included in the traditional Lenten fast, so Lenten sacrifices are normally indulged on Sundays.) - Eric of "The Daily Eudemon"

My one and only experience with beer, or with much of any alcohol, came during a trip to Victoria British Columbia to meet with participants in the International Echinoderm Conference. - Steven Riddle, via email. This struck me as funny: those partyin' Echinodermers!

When our attention is directed toward physical illness, it is natural to think of the effects of the sacrament [of Annointing] in terms of physical healing. Sacraments, however, are celebrations of faith, expressions of who we are before God. This understanding of sacrament, together with the realization that we are more than our physical body, has led us to look again at the effects of the Sacrament of Anointing... The Second Vatican Council has reminded us: 'The purpose of the sacraments is to make people holy, to build up the Body of Christ and finally to give worship to God'. The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick accomplishes this by helping us gain insight into the religious meaning of human suffering." - Fr. Greg of "St Andrew's Q&A"

There's a Monty Python sketch that depicts the World War II-era British army using a "killer joke" against the Germans - a joke that literally destroys everyone who hears it. I think of faith as being the opposite: a joke that, when you're in on it, makes you alive, while everyone who's not in on it decays...Faith, like humor, is all about having a sense of the absurd - and feeling deep inside that the people who puff themselves up are the very people who need to come down a notch or three. Especially if that "people" is one's self. - Dawn Eden in her book "The Thrill of the Chaste"

Sounds Eucharistic...

Excerpt from Selected Writings of Friedrich von Hugel:

All the finest recent psychology, indeed also the deepest epistemology, show us, and insist upon, how we, poor human beings, at least in this life, never begin (or in the long run keep up) the apprehension of things spiritual except on occasion of the awakedness and stimulation of the senses. That is, there is no such thing as an exclusively spiritual awakening to, or apprehension of, spiritual realities. This, to my mind, is already decisive against all purely spiritual, entirely mystical, quite non-historical, quite non-successive religion.

Next, religiously, the human soul, upon the whole, in the long run, in its richest developments, certainly, I think, requires not a half-way house for it on its way to God, but God himself to come down to it, not half-way but the whole way. To put it in the most homely way: surely the infant does not feel its mother's breast a 'half-way house', a queer artificial intermezzo between itself and its mother; but the infant feels that breast as the self-giving of that mother, as a self-compression, a touching condescension for bringing the mother's own life to the infant, and thus gradually to raise this infant to the mother's strength and stature. St. Augustine, surely, surely, had got this point right, in spite of the great attractions which quite certainly a purely spiritual religion possessed for wide stretches of his mind.

Michigan's Only Fault: Being Geographically Disadvantaged

I'm not sure how Florida snuck into the pole position in the BCS. Michigan is apparently being penalized for having played OSU (despite the narrow loss at Ohio State). Family members say "Michigan had their chance" but that makes no sense to me. I thought the title game was between 1 & 2, not 1 and 2 only if 1 & 2 hadn't already played. In my uninformed opinion, it's not too often that the BCS gets the title game wrong. They did this year.

Oh the Irony

Science, or at least those who practice it, are too superstitious, says one scientist.

Video Meliora... Now in HD! 

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Come on in, the Xrays Are Fine! (Not!)

I'm interested in how it came to be that the director of the Transportation Security Administration’s security laboratory chose, or was chosen, to "take one for the team" and allow her body to be x-rayed by a new 'backscatter' machine that leaves precious little to work for the imaginatory system. I assume the result is sort of like those glasses kids in the '70s put on that could see through clothing. (No, I didn't have the glasses, I merely saw them advertised.)

One can only imagine her saying to her boss, "You know, this really isn't in my job description, is it? To strip in front of ten million Drudge readers? Why does it have to be a woman anyway?" And he or she answers, "because naked females do better at generating media than naked males."

I suppose a leader leads by example but in this case we're all just horrified at the lack of modesty and just how revealing the xrays are. Imagine going to a meeting the next day and knowing that everyone in the room has seen you naked? She has balls, I'll give her that. (Well, not literally.) If this whole stunt was intended to say "see, it ain't so bad" it resulted in an equal and opposite reaction.

From the Word Among Us:

Mary is more than just an idealistic example of perfect faith. She is a mother, and she wants nothing more than to bring us to her son, Jesus. Quite simply, she loves us! St. John Vianney tells us, Mary’s heart is so loving toward us that the hearts of all other mothers taken together are but a piece of ice in comparison. We can go to her, not just for our needs, but to ask her help in growing closer to the Lord.

Various & Sundry

Reading this Sunday? Glad you asked. Well there was the Columbus Dispatch, with an interesting re-publish from the NY Times about a Russian former KBG who was poisoned by an obscure element and who, before he died, pointed to President Putin. That led me, naturally, to "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" for a little Soviet atmospheric. Dark. Then a dollop of the novel “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, which I haven't been able to get into for whatever reason. Spending time with Stalin & Dracula meant many a flower I was neglectful in pollinating, though I carried them around as if they were portable rectangles of joy. The natural ebulliency of a read day tends to abate as the clock remorselessly moves.
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Haven't seen The Nativity yet, but one local review included the accusation that it is without joy. If true then it certainly omits the chief message of the Incarnation. By contrast, no one could accuse Handel's Messiah of a dearth of joy.
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Been having a strong hunger for Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”. Reduced to playing and re-playing snippets off amazon.com since I can't find my CD. Alack & alas! Or is it alas & alack?
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I used to have hanging one of those Victorian-era pictures of the Blessed Mother depicted with long attractive brown hair and limpid blue eyes. Her Immaculate Heart was exposed and her face exuded warmth. A few years later, due to a desire for accuracy and a fit of art snobbishness I took it down off the wall. Even if you ignored the exposed heart, I reasoned, this wasn’t what Mary looked liked. Of cours, no one on earth knows what Mary really looked like. But I figured at least I could have an accurate representation of how she represented herself to the indigenous citizens of Mexico in the 1500s.

So I put up one of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Even though this wasn’t what Mary looked like either, it did symbolize what she thought of us. She thought enough to appear to Juan Diego. Her half-Spanish, half-Indian features bespoke a willingness to be, like St. Paul, whatever her fellow humans needed her to be in order to win them over. And that last attitude was telling. It meant that that original Victorian image of Mary, depicted as the girl next door with a heart aflame, was far more accurate than I’d first thought after all.
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I love these sort of posts even if they sound a tad pedantic. I'm most surprised that Tom K hasn't read Confessions. Random thoughts:

I think "The Enduring Chill" is my favorite of Flannery O'Connor's stories.

I guess I'm going to have to read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" since anything Steven & Tom agree on has to be good.

I'll take Steven's disdain for Lincoln's Second as evidence of his profound Southern bias.

His point about Chesterton resonated in that I can't seem to read him continuously. Chesterton's relentlessly aphoristic style makes bite-size pieces easier to take, and yet there are very few authors I'd have wished to have read more -- in other words, I wish to have read his whole ouevre without having read it. I finished "Orthodoxy", but without as much profit as I'd expected going in. I wish I'd chosen to read "The Everlasting Man". I've read that in parts, and those parts have been more illuminative that "Orthodoxy".

Walker Percy must be one of those you either love or hate. He's the only novelist I've read everything he's ever done. (If Updike was less prolific and horny he might've been the second.)
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The Eastern Liturgy I frequent has been a'changing. A new pastor is the reason, and it has taken me aback at how much even a seemingly "unchangeable" liturgy like those of the Eastern church can have a very different feel with a different pastor. I think it shows that Latin Masses could've become "clown" Masses with enough effort and chutzpah. That's not to say this particular Byzantine Catholic Church's liturgy is hugely different from the one under the old pastor; there still is the "public privacy" of a liturgy that provides space for heart-speak. A minor but affective difference for me was the replacement of this prayer (which, with repeats, is long), with a chant of the Beatitudes:

Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth, sing praise to His name; give to Him glorious praise.

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O Savior, save us.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and forever....

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O savior, save us.

Be gracious to us, O God, and bless us; let Your face shine upon us, and have mercy on us. O Son of God, risen from the dead, save us who sing to Your: Alleluia!

This is a prayer from the heart. By contrast, the Beatitudes strike me as not intended as prayer but simply affirming that the poor, pure, single-hearted and meek will be blessed. There is no obvious petition or praise in it. Maybe the pastor put it in there for didactic purposes, but liturgy is one of the few places one can escape the didactic in favor of the estatic. There's always the homily for the latter...

Beer Review



Aaron got me to try a beer called “Hoegaarden”, a “white beer”, but I was sehr disappointed. It self-describes as “naturally cloudy and brewed using a unique recipe of wheat, malted barley and a subtle hint of coriander and orange peel”. This seemed a promising combination though to be honest I was hoping they were scarce on the orange peel. It turned out to be a pretty standard hefeweizen, a type of beer I’ve tried numerous times but that always seems to taste like freshened-up formaldehyde. I realize the lack is in me because Aaron has good taste. He is a decent cook who considered being a chef at one point and certainly has a more developed palate than me. Heck he’s only 25 and drinking Hoegaarden! At his age I was content with Busch Lite. But hefeweizen is still inaccessible to me although drinking a Hoe before a Guinness makes the Guinness taste sooo good. It’s sort of confounding since I can’t see what he sees in Hoegaarden.

Ghosts from the Past

I was reading a blog today that said that most American Catholics are "Calvinists who drink alcohol", which is a memorable turn of phrase with the added benefit of probably being true.

My own experience would suggest it. Before my re-conversion in the late '90s I was, above all, independent -- which is not exactly the Catholic spirit. Emerson and Thoreau were as guiding lights, or at least they were the guiding lights behind some of my guiding lights. If anything I was a Pelagian Calvinist with Norman Vincent Peale as my mentor. The vacuum of Catholic leadership at the time led me to go elsewhere and much of what Peale said seemed to fit well with my native individualism anyway.

I think I read Robert Ringer's Looking Out for Number One without a prick of conscience. In fact I savored it. I now recall little of it though something that did make an impact was that if you work hard you'll succeed because hardly anyone works hard - their laziness is all to your benefit. It was a motivational book that was far more philosophical than it might sound from the title and it was at least startlingly honest. Ringer had that authoritarian ring I was apparently seeking and had about him the scent of a wise guru (his symbol/avatar was a tortoise).

Back then Billy Joel had a hit song Honesty and I didn't experience too much of it in the Church, or at least any explanation for her rules and doctrines, until John Paul II's remarkable Crossing the Threshold of Hope. It's hard to describe how revolutionary that felt at the time. Soon after I happened across someone named Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who was the most honest person I'd ever read in my whole (very limited, though I did not know that) Catholic ouevre. He had a stunning impact and the trick now is to keep that zeal of conversion. I recall a letter John Henry Newman wrote to a recent convert that said something like the real test would come after the initial enthusiasm abated.

Life's probably too short to go back and read the books that had an influence in your youth but it would be interesting to try and even more interesting to see what the authors are doing today - to see if they had any ephiphanies in the meantime. That's something the Internet makes possible since everybody and their brother has a website. A cursory Google reveals Ringer's in the e-letter business.

Another book that had influence was Dr. Wayne Dyer's Your Erroneous Zones, which I read at an age so tender that I couldn't spell, nor maybe even discern the meaning of, "erroneous". Part of the problem with being precocious is that few are precocious in discernment - which is ultimately the only kind of precociousness that matters. It's not so much being able to understand a text that matters but being able to sort dreck from gold. To choose. Dyer's book is probably not dreck, though again I should like to re-read it so that I know what a younger self was reading. More likely it was in the spirit of the time (the '70s), from which I think it's safe to say not a whole lot of good fruit emerged.

What is common about the seemingly dissimilar Ringer, Dyer & Peale? All focus on personal action. You can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. God and other people are periphereal; props on the stage of Your Life. That is poisonous and I could wish that I was a little less precocious, or at least be precocious in the form of reading St. Augustine. For this reason, I have much sympathy for Calvinist Catholics. You really can't hold someone responsible for what they don't know or for inadequate formation.

Althouse on Stephen Colbert via Gerald

Another from the Ohio Memory Site...



"This Apostolic blessing, a benediction given by the pope, was written by Pope Pius X in 1908. In April 1908 the rector-president of the Pontifical College Josephinum, Monsignor Joseph Soentgerath, and several Josephinum personnel traveled to Rome to celebrate the rector's silver jubilee (25 years) of ordination to the priesthood. Soentgerath had a private audience with Pope Pius X and reported on the status of the Pontifical College Josephinum. The pope then wrote this blessing in Latin.

In 1877 Father John Joseph Jessing received permission from Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans to establish what eventually became the Josephinum in Columbus. Jessing, a German immigrant, had established an orphanage in Pomeroy that he funded through the publication of the Ohio Waisenfreund (Ohio Orphans' Friend), a German-language newspaper, but felt that he could accomplish more in a larger city. The Columbus Josephinum was originally located at 831 East Main, then known as Friend Street, at the corner of 18th Street. In 1888, he started the Collegium Josephinum to train young men for the priesthood and to minister primarily to German-speaking immigrants. In 1931, the Josephinum moved to a one-hundred-acre campus eleven miles north of downtown Columbus."

Speaking of Football...

I recall playing neighborhood football screaming "Sam the Bam Cunningham!" just before one of those over-the-top running plays, the kind where you'd try to fly over the action. (Gosh it was fun being a kid.)

Well, I'd always thought of Sam "Bam" Cunningham as mythical, a sort of pigskin Cuchulain. The name was too good. Who could even think up one of such excellent rhyme and metre? But who do I see on IMUS's MSBNC show today? Yep ol' Sam 'Bam'. He exists. He looks good, not like some of the more hard-living ex-football types. He was wearing one of those old fashioned Vince Lombardi hats, a small fedora, the sort of hat only gentlemen of a certain age can get away with.

Who remembers the ol' Punt, Pass & Kick library? The covers bring back memories:

   

But baseball was always my true love, and my favorite was "Strange But True Baseball Stories".

An Impressive Reading List

What, no Great Linebackers of the NFL? St. Blogdom reminds me that I might be better read than the average joe but not in the same league compared to other bloggers (see here and here to name but two).