Have to Get This Into My Archives

Funny retro e-cards<.

Advertisement Sighted

This...

...reminds me of this post.

Brides and grooms would profit a lot more from a spiritual workout...

Song Lyrics

I was flipping thru the FM radio dial and was surprised to come across a current song with a positive message. A quick search for the lyrics produced these:

You could be a hero - heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - you might save a life
You could be a hero - you could join the fight
For what's right, for what's right, for what's right...

No one talks to her, she feels so alone.
She's in too much pain to survive on her own.
The hurt she can't handle overflows to a knife
She writes on her arm wants to give up her life.
Each day she goes on is a day that she's brave
Fighting the lie that giving up is the way
Each moment of courage her own life she saves
When she throws the pills out, a hero is made.

Heroes are made when you make a choice

You could be a hero - heroes do what's right
You could be a hero - you might save a life
You could be a hero - you could join the fight
For what's right, for what's right, for what's right

No one talks to him about how he lives
He thinks that the choices he makes are just his
Doesn't know he's a leader with the way he behaves
And others will follow the choices he's made.
He lives on the edge, he's old enough to decide.
His brother who wants to be him is just nine.
He can do what he wants because it's his right,
The choices he makes change a nine-year-old's life.

"Good Vacations are Poems"

Post about the right – indeed, the obligation – for people to rest and take vacations.

I'm going to have to second that emotion.

In my last parish the days to come were know as "The Time Father Erik Complains About the Bishop Moving the Solemnity of the Ascension to Sunday." I suppose that it could also be called Whiningtide. - blogger at Orthometer, via Jeff Miller

If you, as [bishop and] the primary teacher of the people in your diocese, accomodate - which is not the same as pastoral sensitivity, although the line can be fuzzy - as I say, if you accomodate, hedge and stay silent, how can you expect the people you lead to act differently? Simply put. if you’re going to accomodate, we are, too, and you abdicate your moral authority to stand up there and call us to sacrificial fidelity, no matter what the cost...Now, now, now..that’s not a call. It’s descriptive of a dynamic that I don’t think many people have really thought through. Our faith in Jesus Christ cannot be dependent on what bishops do and don’t do. But I think anyone can see they are, indeed, very important, even in ways of which they themselves are not aware. - Amy Welborn, reviewing "The Faithful Departed" concerning bishops

Some may accuse [Thomas] Sowell of elitism, but I think he’s just anti-dilettantism; opposed to the frivolous waste of scarce resources on kids who spend four years partying, copulating, protesting, and taking the equivalent of “basket-weaving” classes. I agree with him. Job application creep has pushed companies to require bachelor’s degrees for work that a skilled— as in properly educated — high school graduate could do. I’ve mentioned before that our local state college offers a degree in pool management.I’m not kidding. - Dom Bettenelli on Thomas Sowell's contention that not every kid should go to college

Now I have on occasion tried to convince my wife that I'm her superior, with decidedly mixed results. Her most common response is a sneer. She has hinted in her softer moments that she still thinks of me as head of the family, but it's largely a ceremonial position. - Bill of Apologia

Notice the absence of Freemasons. - Amy Welborn, on the players (such as Ronald Knox and Fulton Sheen) in the liturgical reform movement of the 20th century

An interesting but important side note occurred on the subway train back to our hotel from the youth event. A young seminarian, also on his way back from the event in Yonkers, was reading his evening prayers on the train while a group of riders looked on, including a group of interestingly dressed young people. After concluding his prayers he engaged in pleasant conversation with those around him. Their curiosity seemed peaked as to why someone, who might otherwise be heading downtown with them for a night out, was taking a different direction in life. Indeed because of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit, the Shadow of Peter (Acts 5:15-16) was growing larger across the nation. - David Hartline of "The Catholic Report"

This week I talked to a young man, an Irish-American to whom I said, "Am I wrong not to feel anger about Wright?" ...He said he figures Mr. Wright's followers delight in him the same way he delights in the Wolfe Tones, the Irish folk group named for the 18th-century leader condemned to death by the British occupying forces, as they say on their Web site. They sing songs about the Brits and how they subjugated the Irish and we'll rise up and trounce the bastards.. It's just a way of saying, "I'm still loyal to our bitterness." Which is another way of saying, "I'm still loyal."...The thing is to not let your affiliation with bitterness govern you, so that you leave the Wolfe Tones concert and punch an Englishman in the nose. In this connection it can be noted there is no apparent record of people leaving a Wright sermon and punching anyone in the nose. Maybe they're in search of solidarity too. Maybe they're showing loyalty too. - Peggy Noonan

"Now,” continued the homilist, “We could imagine a situation in which Jesus gathered us, as his friends, having a meal with us, and talked to us about not being afraid. What would our response be?” And he continued on in the vein of what objections we might raise to Jesus’ assurances. I was waiting for what seemed to me to be a natural segue. It would go something like, “And do you know what? That is exactly what is happening here. Jesus has gathered us, his friends. He has, through his Word, told us not to be afraid. He has done this in the context of a meal - a meal in which he shares his very Self, his Presence, giving us, indeed, the strength and grace so that we will not, indeed, be afraid of what confronts us, whether it be small challenges we face today or death itself.” But no. What then happened was an admonition that what Jesus wants us all to have is “faith” - and we have “faith” we won’t be afraid. To me, it was a vivid expression of this disconnect. - Amy Welborn

Becoming Our Tools

I've long thought that, over time, our job changes us. Likely our leisure time activities do too. Television, I read on Jim Curley’s blog, makes us “more slothful and stupid”. I think blogging tends to make us more “slothful and cynical”. I’ve learned way too much on blogs to think they’ve made me stupid, but they've also moved my cynic meter up a notch.

Most blogs tend to be polemical. Not all blogs certainly – Dylan, to name only one of many, does a yeoman’s job in trying to uplift us with poetry and spiritual quotations. But what is it that makes us resistant to blogs that tarry awhile, that rest and smell the poetry? I don’t like reading lengthy things on a screen but what of shorter poems? On workdays I rarely seem to be in the mood for reflection or idyll or muse. News is sort of drug-like despite there’s rarely anything truly new in the news. There’s a reason that the Drudge Report is far more popular than the Arts & Lit page. Drudge understands our psychology: we want to “information snack” as Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezo says:

We humans co-evolve with our tools. We change our tools, and then our tools change us. Writing, invented thousands of years ago, is a grand whopper of a tool, and I have no doubt that it changed us dramatically. Five hundred years ago, Gutenberg’s invention led to a significant step-change in the cost of books. Physical books ushered in a new way of collaborating and learning. Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones and PDAs have changed us too. They’ve shifted us more toward information snacking, and I would argue toward shorter attention spans. I value my BlackBerry—I’m convinced it makes me more productive—but I don’t want to read a three-hundred-page document on it. Nor do I want to read something hundreds of pages long on my desktop computer or my laptop. As I’ve already mentioned in this letter, people do more of what’s convenient and friction-free. If our tools make information snacking easier, we’ll shift more toward information snacking and away from long-form reading.

Sunday's Homily

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.

Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Our pastor zeroed in on that word 'doubted'. A paraphrase: How could they be doubting after having spent so much time with Jesus and having seen him raised from the dead? And yet notice what Jesus says. He doesn't say "immediately purge those thoughts from your mind." He says to go out and tell the good news.

Doubt is a part of faith and has two effects: one, is it causes us to seek, to search, when we otherwise wouldn't. Searching is how faith deepens.

It also tells us that we should give what we have. No matter how little or much we have, we shouldn't hoard it.

Thursday's Eucharistic Adoration was in a room in the parish center for the first time and it was mesmerizing to see so close up the miracle of God pentetrating food and feel the hope it restores that He is with us despite our unworthiness. What peace there is kneeling before that calming monstrance containing God, with tiny little clips that held the Bread in place.

Later that eve I saw a bishop’s appeal in the mail in with the words “this is my Body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me” and it struck me that the “do this in remembrance” was not just the creation of Eucharists but to say to others, starting with my own family: “this is my body, which is broken for you”. Easier said than done but we certainly have a good example.

For Bill Luse



This tree is one that I often pass on my (semi)-weekly hike. I call this tree "La Leche Tree" for obvious reasons. (Click to enlarge.)

Capitalism and Dehumanization

[His] point was that the only good about having money is 'that you can ransom yourself back from the system,' continues Hillerman. "What you've got to do, he said, is find a way to get your basic needs met doing something you like to do, so you don't have to buy your time back and thus don't have to have a lot of money."

--Catherine Walsh quoting novelist Tony Hillerman

College is often referred to as "a four year vacation from the realities of life" (er, now five years...or six...) and perhaps part of the reason is because it was test-driven, not time-driven.

Nothing felt more humanizing than college after my high school career at McDonald's, which was completely time-driven. Any minute you were on the clock had to be spent doing something, even if it was the sort of "make work" that made the CCC look like they were curing cancer by comparison: "I don't care if you mopped the floor ten minutes ago," our boss would say, "it's about looking busy."

At college I was not a slave to the clock, I was simply a slave to the work and because there were times when there was more clock than work this seemed a good deal. If I finished a test early I could go read at the library. That is the glamour of college; you could arrange your schedule. You could work assiduously every day or save it up and pull a few all-nighters. You owned the work, but also the time.

These thoughts were inspired by Darwin Catholic's post which mentions Lydia's post at WWTW about corporations requiring development plans.

True story: A month ago my boss said that we all needed development plans since they were being enforced now.

I said flippantly: "how about I read a classic novel? That's broadening. That's development." I told him I read far too much non-fiction and need more liberal arts in my reading diet.

Surprisingly (or not, because he started out as an English major in college) he enthusiastically agreed and we discussed which one to choose.

Well my boss later told a co-worker about my "unusual" development plan, and that co-worker ran and told my bosses' boss, and that boss said "no way is that going to fly".

Sigh.

Pigs Fly Edition: Clinton on the Factor

Watched Hillary on O’Reilly's show. She proved that even the devil can seem to be the incarnation of incandescent goodness given a decent camera angle, sufficient make-up and good lighting. Whether O’Reilly was going to softball the interview was almost irrelevant given the great lighting: in the television age it’s how you look, not what you say (think Kennedy-Nixon debate). “It’s better to look good than to feel good,” goes the old SNL bit. Well in politics it’s "better to look good than to be consistent on energy policy". She voted against drilling and seven times against nuclear alternatives but, you know, she looked downright affable. I daresay there was a chemistry between her and O'Reilly.

Shaken, I felt compelled to look for reassurance of the Hillcat's evilness by re-reading Peggy Noonan’s old book “The Case Against Hillary Clinton”. I was disappointed. I kept looking for a smoking gun but there was nothing other than Hillary is dishonest and only in it for herself. I don’t know why, but I was looking for more.

I checked the index of Paul Kengor’s “God and Hillary Clinton” for “cattle futures” and “Whitewater” and “travelgate” but came up empty. I even looked up “liar” although I knew that would be a lost cause. I’m surprised you could write a book about God and Hillary and not mention those subjects although we’ve all sinned and he could say: what point does it make to say she has sinned? Dog bites man and yet…

Ms. Noonan has been, by my lights, rather impressively open concerning Barack Obama given his voting record and inexperience. "What’s up with that?" I think. And I’ve been thinking it's because Noonan has this intense and visceral dislike of Hillary such that it’s making her “root” for Obama. You have to be very motivated to write a book against somebody, especially Noonan who generally writes books about positive subjects – like Life, Liberty and Happiness or inspiring people like Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.

So with Obama I didn’t know how much to attribute to her Clinton-loathing and how much to basic fairness towards Obama. I suspected the former but then had to admit she was on my wavelength with today's piece on Obama and Rev. Wright. Earlier this week I'd thought: what if blacks who support Rev. Wright are like Americans of Irish heritage who nostalgically support the Fenians? And sure enough, Noonan said exactly what I was thinking. Which means I still can’t pin her openness to Obama to mere Clinton-loathing.

But there are little clues that just maybe Peggy Noonan is disproportionately disappointed in Hillary because Hillary is, like Noonan, a woman, and Noonan might be feeling what I felt about Sen. John Kerry back in '04. I took it personally then that the second Catholic president might be so unCatholic concerning teachings of the Church. Maybe Noonan is feeling resentment that potentially the first woman president is ruthless and out only for herself - in other words, the very things that women are NOT supposed to be.

It seems possible that our dear Peggy is a bit too self-aware of her sex and age as opposed to stands on the issues. She recently joined this over-40 Women on the Web group as the token conservative amid a group of liberals. She wrote a couple weeks ago that "the middle-aged woman is the ancestral arbiter and leader of society”. I’m not necessarily disputing that since I'm married to one and experience that phenomenon firsthand, but for a middle-aged woman to say it sounds awfully triumphalistic and could be indicative of a different Noonan standard for Hillary as opposed to Obama.

But this is all circumstantial. It could also be merely that Noonan values honesty above all else, and by that criteria there’s no question that Obama is going to look pretty good next to Clinton.

Apologia Pro Michael Scott

Is there anything so oddly inspiring as the character of Michael Scott on NBC's "The Office"? He seems to incarnate the old Little River Band lyric: “he’s a loser but he still keeps on trying” and yet that is the plight of every sinner in the state of grace. We lose a lot but we keep on trying.

I can’t help but like him in the same way I can’t help but like the Clintons: they are both shameless. Utterly and completely lacking a shame gene. They are all need, all desire. They are simple and transparent: he needs friends like the Clintons need votes. And for Scott and the Clintons, votes and friends are one and the same - if you can buy them, so much the better.

Yet there was a moment in this week’s show in which Scott went beyond mere animal hunger, displaying raw courage and showing the heart of this comedic warrior.

In the opening montage there was the heroic spectacle of this simultaneously proud and humble man face-down in wet cement in order to leave his mark on the world, while struggling for breath in order to say “that’s what she said”.

I ask you: how can we look down upon a man willing to give his last breath for the sake of a joke?

Pleasingly Foreign

I recall a month or two ago sending Bill Luse a babelfish translated post from the Spanish blogger at Compostela and how Bill was struck by the beauty of English that was pleasingly off-kilter.

I was reminded of that by this passage from a David Sedaris New Yorker reflection on qutting smoking:

All around me, people were enjoying cigarettes: the ruddy Irish couple, the Spaniards with their glasses of beer. There were the Russians, the Italians, even some Chinese. Together we formed a foul little congress: the United Tarnations, the Fellowship of the Smoke Ring. These were my people, and now I would be betraying them, turning my back just when they needed me most. Though I wish it were otherwise, I’m actually a very intolerant person. When I see a drunk or a drug addict begging for money, I don’t think, There but for the grace of God go I, but, rather, I quit, and so can you. Now get that cup of nickels out of my face.

It’s one thing to give up smoking, and another to become a former smoker. That’s what I would be the moment I left the bar, and so I lingered awhile, looking at my garish disposable lighter and the crudded-up aluminum ashtray. When I eventually got up to leave, Hugh pointed out that I had five cigarettes left in my pack.

“Are you just going to leave them there on the table?”

I answered with a line I’d got years ago from a German woman. Her name was Tini Haffmans, and though she often apologized for the state of her English, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be any better. When it came to verb conjugation, she was beyond reproach, but every so often she’d get a word wrong. The effect was not a loss of meaning but a heightening of it. I once asked if her neighbor smoked, and she thought for a moment before saying, “Karl has . . . finished with his smoking.”

She meant, of course, that he had quit, but I much preferred her mistaken version. “Finished” made it sound as if he’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes, three hundred thousand, say, delivered at the time of his birth. If he’d started a year later or smoked more slowly, he might still be at it, but, as it stood, he had worked his way to the last one, and then moved on with his life. This, I thought, was how I would look at it. Yes, there were five more Kool Milds in that particular pack, and twenty-six cartons stashed away at home, but those were extra—an accounting error. In terms of my smoking, I had just finished with it.

Our Immigrants Are Better than Yours - Vol XII

I don't think Mexican immigration, legal and illegal, results in anything like these incarceration rates of Muslims in Europe.

News You Can Use...

Church Member Reports Symptoms of L.S.A.D.

LEXINGTON, KY-- St. Agatha parishioner Leslie Loham annually experiences L.S.A.D. - "Liturgical Seasonal Affective Disorder".

Mrs. Loham describes symptoms of fatigue and lethargy during Lent and exhillaration and relief during Easter.

Dr. Phil Mankowich said that for some the L.S.A.D. symptoms are reversed.

"For some people, Lent is their Pentecost because during that season of grace they feel deep solidarity with Christ suffering. But I'm not picking favorites since all liturgical seasons are good!"

Things You Won't See in the '08 Campaign

As the pandering begins to really heat up, lets cool off with this (from St. Pat's parish bulletin):

BY REV. DOMINIC LANGEVIN O.P.
The Times-Tribune 2008

Fr. Langevin is a priest at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, Charlottesville, Va.

....We find ourselves in a malaise. Our collective economic ills are telling. Some consumers have borrowed and borrowed into heavy debt. A number of lenders have made credit easily available, but at high rates that can be unjust. Both sides feed and are fed by a mentality of instant satisfaction.

The solutions being discussed by our politicians fall into the same trap - quick fixes without addressing the underlying personal and social issues.

In contrast, Pope Benedict could draw upon the Catholic understanding of temperance to encourage people towards economic discipline. For those creditors who have been irresponsible, is it unthinkable for us to revive biblical notions of sinful usury? I think not.

Should the pope be our next financial guru? No. But a papal call to economic reason is certainly within his purview. It is a poignant note that the Catholic pope has to reiterate the importance and implications of reason in a country founded upon Enlightenment principles.

* * *

Speaking of pandering...I think I'm mixing this up the three little pigs but you get the idea:

The Story of the Three Pander Bears


Once upon a time, there were three pander bears running for president.

The daddy pander bear (McCain) went to the voter's market and said "Let's suspend the gas tax!" even though that will drive up fuel consumption and hasten the Reckoning, when the big bad Saudi wolf comes to the door and says "No more oil!"

The mommy pander bear (Hillary) went to the voter's market and said "Let's tax the evil oil companies!" because she wants the government to control everything especially if she's in control of the goverment.

The little pander bear (Obama) went to the voter's market and said "I blame Washington!" because that's what kids do, they blame their parents.