Unlikeliest Nigerian Scam Email of All Time

Subject: CONSIDER MY URGENT REQUEST

From: John Wyndham
Abidjan Cote D'Ivoire

With Due Respect Dearest Beloved,

My name is Mr.John Wyndham. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Domicilliary account by the name of Engineer Manfred Becker. His late second wife twice-removed was among those who died in a plane crash here in

No, wait - I just can't do this any more. The truth is I'm involved in a Nigerian scammer ring after quitting a technical writing job at a Fortune 100 company because, you know, it was such a straightjacket! Every time I tried to do something creative I was shot down. Like throw in a little poetry in an instruction manual. By "technical writing" I didn't know they meant writing stripped of creativity and humanity and reduced to step-by-step joke-free documentation!

And oh boy do they hate fiction. Try to interrupt a computer training manual with a snippet of the novel you're working on (I hope to self-publish) and it's like I'm Edmund Morris or something, ostracized by the entire technical writing community.

So there is no Engineer Manfred Becker and he was not a dead customer for whom nobody has come forward to claim the $18.5 million in his account...

Sure, writing Nigerian scam emails can't look too good on my resume but I hoped at least it would satisfy my creative outlet. But you wouldn't believe these guys - this stuff is more formulaic than what I had to write as a tech writer at GE! Yet my boss says he'll fire me if I try to write "OUTSIDE THE PLOT" as he puts it. (Did I mention they love CAPS around here?)

So don't tell him I wrote this. And please send money as I eat more than the other guys and am large (that's what she said!).

Rank Punditry

Amy Welborn mentions personalities she likes despite disagreeing with them:

They’ve also lined up the best panel, partly because they have no one that I can’t stand. No Keith Olbermann, no Hannity or Colmes, and Larry King only shows up later. Like the Anchoress, I’m putting Donna Brazile on my “Pundits you most disagree with but love the most” list - but then I’ve always liked Brazile. But you throw Begala, Bennett, and the others in there, and you’ve got some watchable stuff. Is it the “B’s?”

Of pundits I can't stand, Olbermann and Katrina Vanden Heuvel head the list. (Thank God for the "fast forward" button on Tivo.) Paul Krugman is terrible too.

Of pundits I disagree yet like, numero uno is James Carville. On Meet the Press, at least, he behaves himself and is very likable. I like Brazille too. And who doesn't love Dee Dee Myers?

The Hillcat Chronicles

I heard someone say recently Hillary is only loved when she's behind. And thus humble.

I think that's likely true, which is why she won New Hampshire. And why she originally won her Senate seat. When she has been humbled by scandal (Bill's behavior) or by a loss (Obama's win in Iowa) it makes her softer, more sympathetic.

It seems a lifetime ago when Bill & Hillary cut that cutesy ad where they're in a restaurant trying to decide which tune to play.

Back then she seemed so ahead of the curve, so in control. She was like Snow White among the seven dwarfs. Or like a pool shark looking for victims. Or maybe just a shark.

But at the time of the ad it seemed a perfect Clintonian gimmick. You can imagine them sitting around a war room table saying, "Hey you know what we need? Something interactive, something to get them to the website, and let the kids think they're in charge of something. How about the campaign song?"

Schtick from long ago

The Clintons had the advantage of the slick advertising, lots of money, and years of planning. (The Hillcat was planning for running for president in the womb.)

You get the sense that humility has an extremely short shelf-life in Hillary. The sense of entitlement would resume almost immediately; had she won a couple more states and eeked out the nomination, by convention time she would've forgotten the difficulty it took to get there.

Or maybe that's unfair, but if it be true then it's not an unusual story. It's the story of nearly all of us.

Churchy Anecdote

So I was going to Mass, having just gotten up from the Communion rail (it's an old-fashioned parish where you kneel and receive on the tongue) and lo & behold the silence of church is shattered by my cell phone playing "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" at Def Leopard-volume. I about jumped out of my skin - likely literally leaped - and assumed my phone was in one of my pockets and so patted myself down in a wild self-frisk. (My very first liturgical dance.) Very embarrassing.

Well, turns out I didn't have my cell phone with me and someone else in church had/has the exact same ring tune. Now there's a first. Live long enough and you too might do a liturgical dance after receiving Communion.

Random Thoughts

There's something eminently practical in the Evangelical approach to things. You could call it quintessentially American since Americans are a practical people.

A local Protestant church, for example, distributed a book to all members with a title that echoes a famous phrase in corporate circles only instead of helping companies get better, this helps families. It looks "self-helpy" but I didn't delve too deeply. I can't imagine any Catholic church handing out free copies of any book, let alone one what improving your familial relationships.

Love seems primarily experiential, not something of a didactic nature, although that could be based on my heretical tendency to see love as a feeling rather than an act of the will. The word "knowledge" is used promiscuously as either book knowledge or street smarts, the learning of facts or the lived experience of those facts. Presupposing that facts = knowledge, I read of a biographer, certainly not alone in this, who says she knows her long-dead subject: "I've lived with so-and-so for five years during the writing of this book". On the other side of the fence we also speak of sexual intercourse as a form of knowledge preceded by the adjective 'carnal'.

In the bible God uses imagery that refers often to experience. He loves with a "father's love", a second-hand knowledge that is accessible to fathers and children, though many aren't fathers and some never knew theirs, thus requiring for them either first or third hand knowledge. Experience is of degrees, like relics which are first degree, second degree and third degree. You may have the experience of first hand, second hand or third hand. The trick, I think, is to be content with whatever level of relic to which God calls us to.

Thankfully God is in love with others, for that is our surety that He loves us. And which is why we're still here. If he loved only us, why would he make us endure the earth when we could be with Him? Heard a Protestant preacher this week say that proof that not everyone goes to Heaven is the continuing existence of earth. "If everyone goes to Heaven," he said, "then why doesn't He just end things right now and bring us all to Heaven? It would make God out to be monstrous if he kept us here suffering when we're all going to Heaven anyway. No, he gives us a whole lifetime to decide where we want to spend eternity."

The question comes up: What if we've already decided? The answer is help influence your neighbor's decision.

"Influence", though, is an interesting word. My experience - there's that word again - is that to attempt to influence creates an equal and opposite reaction. Influence seems little achieved with words for as Cardinal Newman said, "It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing."

When my then-girlfriend (now wife) gave me anti-Catholic materials from her friend, I wasn't influenced towards Fundamentalism. In fact, it led me to Karl Keating's book and I began learning about and appreciating my Catholic faith.

But words are easy. Perhaps the Cross teaches that only the hard thing matters. And is the thing we can't understand:

It seems there is also a special message for us in the way the children of Fatima and Mother Mariana accepted and embraced the cross. The mystery of cross is such a very special grace that Eternal Wisdom only bestows it on His best friends. "It is a greater happiness for St. Peter" writes St. John Chrysostom, "to be imprisoned for Jesus Christ than to be with Him in His glory on Mt. Thabor; it is a greater glory for him to wear his prisoner's chains than to bear in his hands the keys to Paradise."

Eternal Wisdom tells us that the number of fools is infinite. That is, St. Louis de Montfort says, because the number of those who do not know the value of the Cross is infinite, and they carry it despite themselves. You should thrill with joy, he says, because the cross you carry is a gift so precious, it would arouse the envy for the Blessed if they were capable of envy (Love of Eternal Wisdom, p. 97).

Olde Catlick Encyclopedia

I'm hyp-mo-tized by the fact that there's a new Old Catholic Encyclopedia (oxymoron intended) site. It seemed like that was already covered here. Is there some sort of tiff between New Advent and Catholic Answers?

At first brush it seems the new one brings to the table every page lovingly scanned, and many a beautiful page there is, albeit disfigured by a Catholic Answers emboss.

Fiction for a Wednesday

When last we left, Cube Warrior had been led from the free range of a spacious office to a cubical reservation. There he was to grow corn, perfect his whine-making ability, and pacifically chew cud while saying deep things, occasionally getting a star turn on television - like producing a tear at the sight of litter thrown next to his cube wall.

Cube Warrior and his band all went willingly, walking the trail of tears down to the burren lands no one wanted. Huge trash bins and old equipment lined the hallway leading to the cubicals and lent a feeling of unease, like that of an overfull closet that won't quite shut right.

New construction along the trail created the need for a floor-to-ceiling black plastic sheet, leaving a one-body passageway. They went single file, weighed down by personal effects. An electrical outlet on the floor nearly tripped Likes-His-Cereal (English name: "Mikey"), and so later Likes-His-Cereal taped a miniature flag with flag pole to the outlet box in order to alert others but later he tripped over the flag so he took it down.

Once ensconced in the new cubes and in their old chairs they felt as if underwater, limbs heavy, the simplest tasks requiring a great overturning of inertia. Odd that in so small a space it would feel a great distance to retrieve a farming tool from a desk drawer! But then they were feeling self-conscious, every movement seemed unnaturally loud and having the dynamic of a restroom stall.

Chief Shining Dome sits next to his diminishing tribe but feels the pinch of privacy too; he adheres to musical notations that only draw more attention to the score: a sudden pianissimo, the hushed sound of something interesting being said on the phone alerts their ears, as does the familiar fortissimo.

Occasionally they'll hear, "did you hear that!" but it was mezzo and they did not, engrossed as they were in corn-growing even though it was meant for their ears. They're still getting used to the reservation.

I was thinking the other day about my own "personal experiences of God's power." Nothing astonishing, I hasten to say, no visions or wonders, not even anything inexplicable in natural terms. It occurred to me, though, that explicating experiences in natural terms is a right daft way of living my life. Look, I told myself, I believe that God loves me. If I can believe something as ridiculous as that, why can't I believe that something I subjectively experience as His love for me objectively is His love for me? If my wife makes me my favorite breakfast, I'll freely say it's because she loves me. I don't say, "Sure, she loves me and all, but why would she make me my favorite breakfast just because of that? It's probably just a coincidence." Shall I be like the man on the desert island who prays, "Dear God, please send a ship to rescue me -- oh, never mind, there's one now."? Or shall I instead trust in God, particularly in His presence and involvement in my life, even at the risk of -- what? Seeing God present and involved in my life? - Tom of Disputations

Perhaps the reason converts from Protestantism expect to an experience tantamount to be being blinded by a great light and knocked off a donkey is that they have been taught, whether consciously or unconsciously, to pattern their Christianity after St. Paul's life. (Well, his epistles are closest thing we have to a practical instruction manual. That must be a big deal for anyone who holds to sola Scriptura.) Cradle Catholics are far more Petrine: there is no dramatic light and heavenly voice, just Someone we've known for years--Someone we've grown prosaically used to--suddenly turning to us and casually asking, "And you . . . who do you say that I Am?" - Sancta Sanctis

It always concerns me when an issue [i.e. clericalism] is presented as something to be solved. [Russell] Shaw’s image of the sick man, as clear and expressive as it is, does not serve this particular issue well. Clericalism will always be with us. It can never be “solved.” Trying to “solve” it can only feed the frenzy of anti-clericalism. It is better to identify its characteristics and seek to lessen them, in a word, contain them. - commenter on "Inside Catholic"

[Thomas] Merton’s dedication to the prayer of the Hours and the normal work of Gethsemani fits in to the basics of such exercise; his prayer was regular, his eating regular, his work regular, his fasting regular, all within the confines of the ordered liturgical year. His spiritual life was well-ordered by his community, and so he didn’t fall into the excesses of heart in which many of us more independently-minded Christians will often wind up...So why did he go to the hermitage?... It has been said of Gethsemani that after the community decides you’re a good fit and accepts you, it works you over. Gethsemani changes you, and often, you’re no longer right for it. I’d say that it’s God that does the changing, but the principle remains the same: something of the experience is transformative, and the difficulty is in remaining in your place when you’ve been cut to a new shape. For Thomas Merton, the key, the solution, was to disengage from the community while remaining a part of it by physically separating himself from the main body, and taking new work...I’m inclined to think he overacted in isolating himself from his community. There, while capable, perhaps, of better prayer, he was more able to let his mind wander around his many books, and in a short period flirted with dozens of ideologies and ideas. In withdrawing from the monastery, he may have assumed a strength he didn’t yet possess. Merton’s writing has always had, to me, a tinge of arrogance. I don’t say this in contempt, as I confess that I’m a pretty arrogant guy myself, and he grew increasingly insular and incomprehensible and disconnected in his work in that hermitage. He began writing, in a sense, only to himself. It’s like the philosophy of art for art’s sake, which early 20th century literary and art critic Malcolm Cowley derides as useless and without referent to real life. - found here, via Amy Welborn

The disciples think they've finally figured Jesus out...and they say with one voice: "Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God."...Jesus [replies]: "Do you believe now? Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone." He doesn't say the disciples don't believe that He came from God. He warns them that their newly-minted belief in His origins does not yet amount to faith in Him personally. They have not yet worked through the implications of their profession; they aren't quite ready to declare boldly, "What will separate us from the love of Christ?" Well, they're ready to declare it. They aren't ready to live it. Still, Jesus loved them to the end. He did not belittle them for their immature declaration of belief, but directed them beyond declarations to Himself: "I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world." He neither demands nor expects the disciples to take courage that night. He might have commanded them to stay with Him...but is that the discipleship God became man to obtain? - Tom of Disputations

Our separation of economy from the home is part of a long fragmentation process. ... We have separated everything from everything else. We have accomplished this by separating everything from the home. Feminism has separated women from the home. Capitalism has separated men from the home. Socialism has separated education from the home. Manufacturing has separated craftsmanship from the home. The news and entertainment industry has separated originality and creativity from the home, rendering us into passive and malleable consumers rather than active citizens. - Dale Ahlquist via Jim Curley of "Bethune Catholic"

Few cradle Catholics approach Catholicism as a favourite hobby. For us it is often as invisible, and necessary, and taken for granted, as the air we breathe. Our local customs, our swear words, and our lack of enthusiasm often shock new, fresh, dazzled converts. But despite our lackadaisical air and our many sins, the words of the Mass and the grace of baptism still course through our veins. - Still Seraphic, via Sancta Sanctis

Parts of Europe are wondering how to deal with Muslim fundamentalists while their very governments are caving in to demands for Sharia law, the removal of St George’s Cross from British prisons, and offering welfare to immigrants who want to turn England, Holland and France into a Muslim state. It seems that like US liberals, members of the EU see America as a bigger threat to freedom and modernity than the bearded men who want to turn the calendar back to 950. Mention this to any good, decent American lib and they’ll nod and add, “But have you seen Jesus Camp?” The documentary is the scariest argument for liberals who equate American fundamentalists with Muslim terrorists. Apparently speaking in tongues and trying to teach evolution is the same as celebrating a plane load of terrorists who asked that no women attend their funerals. Moral equivalency much? Is modern culture worth saving is the question. According to some, even asking this makes you a nationalist or a Nazi. - phil of "Please Hold Your Applause"

[G.K. Chesterton] is well-known for pointing out that there are two ways to reach one's home: the first is to stay put and the second is to go all the way around the world until one arrives back at where one started from. Martin Luther went on such a quest; so did John Calvin, John Knox, and all the other Protestant founders. On them lay the strange grace of resembling Our Lord in having no place to lay their heads. Such a quest is bigger than any one man, and it is no surprise that none of them completed it in his lifetime. It is their sons and daughters who, by the hundreds, are completing the circumnavigation of Christendom. Yet it may take hundreds of years before the quest fulfills itself and all our separated brethren complete the journey home. What is to separate this kind of searching from natural periods of doubt which assail individual cradle Catholics and which are often agonising to overcome? We can do that without ever leaving home. Protestantism is the same natural doubt on a grand--even epic--scale. Who is to say that our separated brethren aren't closer than either party would like to admit? "Home" has a wider, wilder landscape than most of us recognise, especially when we had that other strange grace of resembling Our Lord by being brought out of Egypt and then never leaving home again. - Enbrethiliel & Antony of SS

The Great Uncluttering

...via Terrence Berres

While on the subject, here are my tips to unclutter and/or symplify life:

1) Pay all bills online (with Visa or by automatic check)
2) Set up Excel spreadsheet with charities /bills that automatically sums categories. Easier than Quicken.
3) Kindle or other e-reader
4) Shave in the shower
5) When our cafeteria has two good entrees I'll buy extra meals at lunch; one to be consumed immediately and the others stored in a refrigerator at work and intended for supper.
6) Drink more beer; then you won't notice clutter as much.

Stream o' Consciousness Post

“Give me poetry or give me death!” Patrick Henry should've said, after that liberty thing got nailed down. I would've agreed in kind, though not that I read poetry that much – it draws too much attention to itself. I prefer poetry masquerading as prose. I like music. Movies are nice although I've found I'm increasingly under the title "tough crowd". For Mother's Day we took my mom and a grandchild to see “Nim’s Island”, a tryingly trite entertainment. The South Pacific island locale promised great photography and escapism but this seemed a bit too… fanciful, and that wasn’t just limited to plot twists. 'Twas very Rousseauian. Good movie for kids though.

But real art... well, it has the element of surprise and refreshment. Sometimes it’s hard to see art as secondary let alone irrelevant, though it is for so many who are in parts of the world where there isn’t enough food, let alone art. I think “The Lost Weekend” was a title of book, or a movie, or a book and movie but I can’t relate; I never have lost weekends because that's where the art lay. I have lost weeks and found weekends but never the reverse.

* * *
This month's meeting was made bearable by a co-worker giving out “Buzzword Bingo” to five of us. Everyone had different words, and it increased mental acuity by 74% by forcing you to pay attention. I was able to get five buzzwords but not such that I could stand up and yell “buzzword bingo!”. Amazingly, one of the big guys knew about it and played along, asking during lulls in the action how we were doing. I asked if he took bribes.

* * *
It was pleasant to read Scott Hahn’s account of his sticking with "dull" Presbyterianism at college in his latest book despite being surrounded by Pentecostal kids getting more “bang for their spiritual buck” in terms of emotion. Hahn turned his back on the emotionalism and enthusiasm and even apparent miracles of this other church when his Presbyterian services were so dull and seemingly lifeless. It all hinged on his buddies going to get “re-baptized”; the rubicon was reached. Infant baptism – yes or no? He went to see his professor who suggested he write a paper on it and Scott was reinforced in his Presbyterianism but, at the same time, you could see how he was destined for Rome from that. If you’re not going to go for the emotionalism & miracles then an awful lot of searchers are going to go Roman. Catholicism feels a bit of the headwind of history in that nowadays we so don’t want intermediaries because our world is full of prefunctories and intermediaries and yet…and yet we have the Eucharist, which is God, without even the direct pipeline, and the salvation economy is centered on intermediaries in the form of not only priests, in persona Christi, but lay people who are to bring God to each other.

No wonder Pope John Paul II was so taken by personalism as a philosophy. It is the ache of modern man. We want “authenticity”, which may well be another word for the “personal”. An authentic signature is different from a robotized signature only because the former is personal. Pope Benedict is so right in emphasizing the personal relationship aspect with Christ. As he said in his recent visit to America:

“Saint Irenaeus, with great insight, understood that the command which Moses enjoined upon the people of Israel: “Choose life!” (Dt 30:19) was the ultimate reason for our obedience to all God’s commandments. Perhaps we have lost sight of this: in a society where the Church seems legalistic and “institutional” to many people, our most urgent challenge is to communicate the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love.”

The great problem of modernity is alienation – alienation from land and man due to industrialization and individualism, and both of those lead to alienation from God, because we see God as similar to the “neighbor whom we can see” - be it the asphalt we constantly pave or the neighbors from whom we feel distant because they are simultaneously both too much with us and too little needed. We feel extraneous and ubiquitous.

St. Faustina wrote, during a period of darkness, “O Lord, though I cannot comprehend You and do not understand Your ways, I nonetheless trust in Your mercy.” How could someone not comprehend God and not understand His ways and still love him? I think because she knew God enough to compare him to the sun: “Despite the deep night…I know the sun never goes away.”

We do not have a pontiff unsympathetic to the subtleness of the Spirit. Benedict continues:

In a word, it is not always easy to see the light of the Spirit all about us, the splendor of the Risen Lord illuminating our lives and instilling renewed hope in his victory over the world (cf. Jn 16:33).

Yet the word of God reminds us that, in faith, we see the heavens opened, and the grace of the Holy Spirit lighting up the Church and bringing sure hope to our world. “O Lord, my God,” the Psalmist sings, “when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Ps 104:30). These words evoke the first creation, when the Spirit of God hovered over the deep (cf. Gen 1:2). And they look forward to the new creation, at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and established the Church as the first fruits of a redeemed humanity (cf. Jn 20:22-23). These words summon us to ever deeper faith in God’s infinite power to transform every human situation, to create life from death, and to light up even the darkest night. And they make us think of another magnificent phrase of Saint Irenaeus: “where the Church is, there isthe Spirit of God; where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace”.

This week Jesus returns our longing in the gospel of John: “I wish that where I am they also may be...” and “that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me." What greater surety is there than the Father’s love for Christ?

The Magic of Recycling (Old Heresies)

Came across an old book - "The Magic of Believing" - that I'd blindly acquired in an old Ohio State Library book sale.

The OSU library book sales are the closest I've ever been to being a homesteader or a '49r, at least as seen in the move "Far & Away". In it, we see all these guys on horses and a gun goes off and they rush off to claim their land. This is sort of like when the gun goes off and all the mad bibliomaniacs rush off to claim our prizes. The mad dash is set off by the announcement of "buck a bag" time when you can fill up a brown grocery bag full of books for one U.S. dollar. This results, naturally, in not a lot of perusing and evalulation. It's the 2am-closing-time equivalent at the local bar; all the books look fine. And it seems one of those books was the heretofore not-read "The Magic of Believing".

"The Magic of Believing" was published 17 years ago, a generation. These ideas must be like cicadas, coming back with regularity due to an influx of people who either missed them the first time or younger folks coming of age in the interim. (They say liberal and conservative cycles last about 15 years, presumably because by then there are enough new voters who are ready for something new and who are blissfully unaware of the mistakes made under the last governance.)

Similarly "The Magic of Believing" sounds like "The Secret" in older clothes. An Amazon.com reviewer has the scoop:

This book also contains advice that could be dangerous: in Chapter 5, the author tells of a woman who took a long automobile trip against the advice of her mechanic who suggested that her tires were bald and should be replaced. Nevertheless, she took the trip anyway and, because she "believed", her car did not suffer a blowout...

In another part of the book, the author talks about a great military leader who strongly believed he would triumph, but failed anyway. This is because the belief of the opposing side counteracted his own beliefs. So beliefs can be counteracted by opposite and opposing beliefs.

Elsewhere, Our Sunday Visitor helps expose the New Ageism of The Secret.

For the Sake of Comedic Excellence

Kindle Me Up Scotty!

I bought an Amazon Kindle with our government's stimulous payment (I'm not one to look a gift stimulous payment in the mouth even if it is a return of my own money) in part because there's a 30-day return period. The collecting impulse is strong; I promiscuously want every book I could ever want on the thing. It has the fatal flaw of so many gadgets in creating more desire to play with it than use it as intended - in this case to actually READ anything.

But it's great fun just to figure out which books to add, to find something great for $2 or $3 on the Kindle store. It's sort of like Fantasy Football; you don't have to ever watch a pro football game to enjoy the thrill of aiming for the perfect roster.

I’m intoxicated by the idea of having a library of great books in a device the size of a paperback. I think it goes to that hoarding instinct. Hoarding is the opposite of consumption; to actually read something is to consume it, consume as if by flames for it can be difficult to re-read things. To re-read something feels wrong somehow, given that there are so many things unread. It’s a large hurdle for the finished book to leap: it must be better than the perception of ANY unread book. So I am too tempted to assemble a Kindle collection just so I admire it, than actually read it.

I’m still not sure if I’ll keep Kindle. It seems perfect for travel, but I don't travel that much. And I miss the physicality, the smell of pages and binding. The ease of getting around of, say, a newspaper. The NY Times in print has pictures and an attractive layout and quicker access to the sections. I’ve talked myself into thinking that Kindle is different from reading off a screen but I don’t know...

One difference is the page is so small. You have to constantly hit the ‘next screen’ button. Kindle also seems a small further step away from nature, from trees in the form of paper, from the smell of ink and glue. We are alienated enough from nature.

Perhaps it seems to be more exciting for what it represents than for what it actually offers. It represents the potential of hundreds of books consolidated into the size of paperback. It appeals to the security-conscious; it allievates the vexing question of which book to take to a desert island – why you’d take your Kindle of course, and thus not have to choose among children. But what is more hypothetical than a desert island?!

Kindle highlights the difference between a superficial piety and love. I can easily fixate on the miraculous quality of Kindle – how it can store so many books, how it can instantly download another – while missing the whole point, that is to use it to READ.

Similarly I can fixate on the miraculous nature of Christianity – how there are so many miracles and answers to prayer while missing the whole point, that is to love. God first and then neighbor with the overflow. Just as Jesus did.

Speaking of the miraculous, I read something by G.K. Chesterton concerning the telephone in the latest Gilbert Magazine. He wrote in favor of the telephone as a source of wonder because he was in favor of fostering wonder:

“I am not attacking inventions; I am attacking indifference to inventions…I am not objecting to the statement that the science of the modern world is wonderful; I am only objecting to the modern world because it does not wonder at it.”

Chesterton warns against a deluge of wonders that would destroy wonder.

A quick Google search reveals the following: “I have often thanked God for the telephone,” he says in says in What’s Wrong With the World and yet a Christianity Today article opines: “He never came to terms with the telephone.”

I'm not sure if I'll come to terms with Kindle but I do wonder at it.

“You can telephone with a telephone; you cannot do anything else with it. And though this is one of the wildest joys of life, it falls by one degree from its full delirium when there is nobody to answer you.” - G. K. Chesterton

Really?

One of my favorite columnists, Peggy Noonan, reflects the current beltway zeitangst concerning the Democratic primary season:

Instead, you know where they are, the party elders. They are in a Democratic club on Capitol Hill, slump-shouldered at the bar, having a drink and then two, in a state of what might be called depressed horror. "What are they doing to the party?" they wail. "Why are they doing this?"

Is it really that bad? A floor fight at the August convention - now that's bad. But I don't see how this is so ugly for the party. It's all so temporary. What does it matter whether the primary ends in March or June? Sure it's costing money and time in terms of organizing. And I suppose they are driving up each others' negatives slightly. But the November election is a lifetime away in political terms. Obama and Hillcat are getting lots of free publicity. For Obama to get the Wright issue behind him in April rather than October, is a huge help to him. It's still the Dems to lose.

And lose they might, in part because it's hard not to long nostalgically for the comparative "centrism" of John Kerry. While Obama is somewhat a stealth candidate in terms of his record, his associates and pastor would make Kerry blush. As NR said recently,

"A normal liberal politician wouldn’t get near this — the political instinct would be, ‘I don’t want to touch this’ — but none of it offended [Obama's] sensibilities,” the Jewish Democratic strategist said. “He sat there in rooms where Israel was likened to Osama bin Laden. He didn’t walk out.”

I used to know a girl in college nicknamed "Delayed Reaction" for her sluggish reaction time in discourse. I'm beginning to think Obama could be similarly named. He was slow on the Reverend Wright thing, condemning his remarks only after a few days of considering the matter, and then later full distancing him after a couple days of Wright's subsequent egregious television appearances.

It could be seen as a good thing, that as a messenger of hope he simply hates to go negative. Or you could say Obama is merely careful and cautious, politically and otherwise, but you could also say that he's slow because he is always having to check his natural, gut instinct which might be sympathy for positions that for most of us are repellant. For example, from NR:

[One], Obama had declined to condemn Carter’s meeting with Hamas, though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had opposed the trip. Two, the Palestinian terrorist group took the unusual step of endorsing him. When asked about the endorsement, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, was flattered that Hamas compared his candidate to JFK: “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.” Republican nominee John McCain quickly took note. “We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas,” he said.

The day following Wafflegate, Obama told the press it was a “bad idea” for Carter to meet with Hamas, as it gave the group “a legitimacy that was unnecessary.”

Delayed reaction, 'eh?

One of the funnier comments I've heard recently was Dennis Miller lamenting the fact that McCain is treating Obama and Clinton like precious Faberge eggs: "It's condescending!" he said.

Thoughts Regarding Parousia

Reading Cardinal Ratzinger's Eschatology. It's amazing how prolific he is/was. He's the John Updike of ecclesiological writers.

Early in this book he explores how the gospel accounts give different slants on how soon the Second Coming would be; for Matthew it looks imminent, for Luke much less so.

I like that we have a Pope who has struggled with Scriptures, a scholar who has made it through the thicket of historical criticism with his faith intact, like Jacob wrestling with the angel.