Merciful Thoughts...

...from a bishop on Sen. Kennedy, [update] via Roz of Exultet.

Cruising Speed

In lieu of writing about my own experiences, which consist primarily of making Welbornian travel arrangements (not to Europe, just somewhere warm this fall though I'm also itching for a NYC weekend such that I may go solo), I thought today I'd write a post documenting the adventures of Ham of Bone.

I'm calling it Cruising Speed after the documentary of a week in the life of William F. Buckley but I could've titled it The Last of the Rugged Individualists, seeing how Ham is a sort of Eustace Conway for the computer programmer set (to the extent that's not oxymoronic).

Son of a non-itinerant preacher, upon coming out of the womb he asked the doctor to turn off the lights not because they were too bright but out of concern for the hospital's electrical bill. He grew up in the belt of Protestant Christianity and has slowly come closer to the Catholic faith, albeit balking at his paternal (the Pope) and maternal (the Mother of Jesus) inheritance. A fan of the evangelist Francis Shaeffer, he considers himself non-denominational today.

A few months ago he informed me that his retirement date is set for the end of next year, he who is all of 45 and has 4 kids between the ages of 5 and 13 (give or take). [Insert gasps here.] If true, it's primarily due to a case of a strong work ethic and intelligence (which provided him a good salary) along with draconianly small spending habits. These two potent ingredients, along with his avoiding taking a bath in the recent stock market debacle, has resulted in a good-sized nest egg which promises him a future freedom which I'm not sure how he'll use.

So, he's focussed on God, his family, his investments, his job...leaving no time for political concerns, right?

Wrong!

Despite almost weekly commutes to Manhattan from Ohio, he is politically engaged to the point of making a speech at a local tea party and, now, on a moment's whim, marching on Washington.

(The real reason for the trip, it is said, is that he's too cheap to pay for cable and so has to watch the beloved OSU Buckeyes in a hotel room...the latter which is free, I understand, due to the frequency of business travel.)

He's taking the whole family and his flexibility in travel plans is awe-inspiring, seeing how for me a trip across town is planned farther in advance.

Ham o' Bone has come far in his knowledge of politics, religion, and his chosen career - in fact, everything but beer.

Fr. Corapi: Apostle of Hope

On the way to work I saw two cars, one turning right and the other turning left. I stopped and waved for them to go. The car turning right went first but impatiently I didn't allow the one turning left to go, despite there being no cars coming the other way.

I felt discouraged that I failed in such a small matter to "do unto others as I would have them do to me". But then I listened to Fr. Corapi and he said something very pertinent like, "what do you do if you are weak and feel of little account and of little service? Do not grow discouraged but look to St. Therese and the 'little way'. Know that in weakness there is strength, and boast as St. Paul did of his weakness. It's an opportunity for God to show His great love." Very encouraging and I resolved to do better, if only in the littlest things.

It's High-Laire

...to see the outrage of Democrats over someone calling the President a liar. They must think we have short memories. You really can't make it up.

Randomized Thoughts

Through the miracle of Bloglines I was alerted to fresh magic from Steven Riddle & Betty Duffy today. I'm semi-fascinated that Betty's psuedonym is so plain; I suspect it means her real name is not and that for her it's a relief to have a name you don't have to spell. Betty's latest post was funny and I admit to a hypochondriacal streak far stronger than hers.

Lately I've been concerned by high blood pressure but when the nurse took my BP for the yearly physical it was 124/80, not 140/90 as it was on the BP machine just outside the nurse's office.

"Do not trust that machine!" she said.

But contrary to the "white coat disease" where your BP goes up higher when being measured by a medical professional, I find the touch of a woman nurse calming. So now, hypochondriacally, I wonder if female nurses artifically lower my pressure.

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I'm really loving the comments on this bible blog post, even if it's rank stereotyping and helps further divide the church by placing labels on people. It's all so wrong. But see my blog title. I also find, to my dismay, that I sometimes like talking about bible versions even more than reading one.

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Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham sees the proliferation of social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter as a negative, asking why it is that we don't live more instead of going online and dishing out minutiae like what we ate today. Ingraham had on an expert saying that online communication is not nearly as therapeutic (if you will), as the real thing. We are embodied and all that.

Sometimes it does seem like the vacation triplogs got out of hand because I was writing more about vacation than actually vacationing, in fine cart-before-the-horse fashion. But then I enjoy writing so much that it could be said to be part of the vacation, an excuse and inspiration to write. I find it calming. And it probably lowers my blood pressure.
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I watched the Obama speech last night with the fast-forward button handy in order to ward off pointless applause. The high point was someone yelling something after Obama said no health care for illegal immigrants ("You lie," it turned out to be) and I found the frowning faces of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden particularly compelling as any burst of true emotion would be in an otherwise contrived affair. Speeches like this one, before a joint session of Congress, have a sort of Academy Awards flair to it, at least for political junkies. While she was glad-handing down the red carpet I kept waiting for someone to ask Hillary who she was wearing. Disappointing was the lack of Supreme Court justices, wearing their sober black and sitting on their hands. It's like American Idol without Simon. I like how they act apolitical when the opposite is mostly true.

Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

The Mass recapitulates, reexperiences, all of Christ’s life and thus church history. I suddenly realized that – DUH! The Gloria is Christmas! We’re singing with the angels (in the new translation at least) — “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of goodwill”! It’s CHRISTMAS! The start of Mass is the Annunciation. That time when the priest says, the Lord be with you — he’s talking Emmanuel. It’s like Gabriel and Mary all in one! The Gloria is Christmas, the Liturgy of the Word is the public life of Christ, the Creed is Peter and the rest believing. Then everything from the Offertory on is the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. (Well, that part I did know.) Then after Communion, the Lord sends us on our way with the Great Commission. When the Real Presence is no longer present within us, it’s Ascension. And the whole time we look toward the East, if we do, we’re looking toward the Second Coming. - Suburban Banshee

I may be weird, but I like the NRSV and ESV the best of those mentioned. The NIV, TNIV, and NLT treated Paul as the first Lutheran.- commenter concerning bible versions on Scott McKnight's "Jesus Creed" blog

So often in my life, especially since my rediscovery of faith, I have found that God fills me with such tremendous graces as a means of preparing me for some struggle or another. I remember when I was diagnosed with cancer, those first two weeks or so I was flooded with grace and an overwhelming sense of the presence of God in my life, a gift I recognize was given to me so that I would be able to maintain hope during those subsequent weeks of great spiritual darkness. It is very easy in this life to lose trust in God, to forget that we are indeed under His loving providence, and that He loves us more than we could ever know. I believe that was the case again here, where God blessed me with such a magnificent experience of community, of the Augustinian vocation, just as the first real challenges would arise. These past few days have had some struggles, some hardships, some of which I anticipated, some I certainly did not. At first they began to weigh on me, until finally I was able to remember that I did not join religious life because I sought a life of comfort, but rather because it is where I trust that God is calling me and that for me it is the truest path to God. It is the same for someone called to marriage. A marriage is certainly going to have difficulties, but one does not choose marriage because it is easy, but rather because love compels each towards the other. And it is that love that not only makes the struggles endurable, but that even transfigures those struggles into virtue. - Psalm 46:11 - A Journey to Truth

Acedia,[Kathleen] Norris wrote, is essentially, an unwillingness to accept God’s gift of today... I would rather just skim the surface of the present, driving up and down 280 several times a day, then sitting and re-watching every single episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, thinking of how Michael would say Suzie was me (gee, thanks) and how Jeff reminded him of his friend Brian. Which over the past month, is exactly what I have done...The server brought a box, the bill and a fortune cookie. I wondered what it would say. I cracked open the crescent, bent in on itself, and pulled out the slip of paper. I almost felt the need to brace myself. Stop it, I said. Superstition.Working hard will make you live a happy life. Well. - Amy Welborn via Bill of Summa Minutiae

It seems strange to think of the modern WWJD movement and all these obviously Catholic characters and quirks as branches from a single vine. Yet they are all clearly rooted in the same desire to follow Jesus as closely as possible--to be able to say, as did St. Paul, that Christ lives in one. WWJD is what you have left of the Catholic brand of discernment after you take the Eucharist away. The Catholic (and therefore, original) version of WWJD dates from the first century and can be abbreviated as QVD: Quo Vadis, Domine? Note the essential difference. It is not, "Where would Jesus go?" It is, "Where are You going, Lord?" So St. Peter followed Him into Rome and to an upside-down cross . . . his brother St. Andrew followed Him into Scotland and to yet another kind of cross . . . St. Anthony of Egypt followed Him into the desert . . . St. Augustine and St. Anselm followed Him into the episcopacy . . . St. Monica followed Him by following her own son . . - Sancta Sanctis

Latin orations, especially the Post-Communion orations, tend to conclude strongly with a teleological or eschatological point. The new translations in English follow the sequence of these Latin prayers in order to end on a strong note. One example from Tuesday of the First Week of Lent:

"Grant us through these mysteries, Lord,
that by tempering earthly desires
we may learn to love the things of heaven."

In colloquial speech we would probably say, “we may learn to love the things of heaven by tempering earthly desires.” Yet the order is reversed. The result: there is now a strong teleological emphasis on the things of heaven.

This use of inversion is a characteristic of the Latin Missal. In the Proper of Seasons, eighteen of the Prayers after Communion (14%) use inversions. The result is powerful. When prayed, the prayer does not simply dribble off into insignificance. It retains the distinctive theological emphases of the Latin text. In fact, the slightly non-colloquial word order leads the listener to a greater attentiveness to the point of the prayer.
- taken from the Address of Bishop Arthur Serratelli to the 2008 National Meeting of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions

Handy Hint for Conscience Formation of Vowed Religious #7: Quoting Martin Luther approvingly is a bad sign. - semper helpful Tom of Disputations on a nun supporting women's ordination

This & That

Biblical tribalism
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Been thinking of the sometimes ridiculousness of office work - the trivial infighting and politics and tiny-to-the-point-of-zero effect that any one person can contribute to the bottom line of a corporation - but also how those feelings can be leavened by humility.

The example that comes to mind is offered by Kathleen Norris in Acedia and Me of a hermit monk who made baskets but who was too far from civilization to profit from it, so every year he burned all his baskets. Interesting. It puts work on a completely different plane; by removing all trace of utility that monk was really proclaiming that work is made for man and not man for work, as John Paul II said.
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A controversial view of Medjugorje
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St. Leo the Great's exegete about "blessed are those who mourn":

"The mourning for which he promises eternal consolation, dearly beloved, has nothing to do with ordinary worldly distress; for the tears which have their origin in the sorrowcommon to all mankind do not make anyone blessed...Religious grief mourns for sin, one's own or another's; it does not lament because of what happens as a result of Go'd justice, but because of what is done by human malice. Indeed, he who does wrong is more to be lamented than he who suffers it, for his wickedness plunges the sinnner into punishment, whereas endurance can raise the just man to glory."

Well, you can tell why he's a saint.
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Humor seems at least partially generational. A friend writes, "Jerry Lewis was needlessly vulgar and 'ethnic' at some points during the telethon. Came off more like an unfunny (unfunnier?) Don Rickles. He told a little girl, "Tell God that the Jew is on your side," or words to that effect. The girl looked duly appalled."

And during the thirty seconds I watched indeed he did sort of insult this Burger King executive who came on, telling him he was boring. (He was.) I'm guessing people over 60 find Rickles and Lewis very funny.

Sincerity is Overrated?

Eve's anti-sincerism posts sincerely fascinate me. She packs a lot in a little when she says,

"I note that 'safe, sane, and consensual' is an extraordinarily sincerist credo; its assumptions about our ability to know ourselves, and its assumption that self-knowledge and self-ownership form the core of morality, are basically my exact problems with the sincerist ideal. Not to mention that s/s/c = three things vocation isn't."

Calling vocation not consensual reminds me of that seminarian blogger who titled his blog, "You Duped Me, Lord!". (He later changed his title, presumably because he really wasn't being duped.)

I wonder if Eve's thoughts are applicable to other things. It's a Catholic credo that the Bible is not self-interpreting and that it should be read in the mind of the Church. Could we say of sola scriptura the same things Eve said were problems of sincerism? Namely:

* It's a genre which thinks it's the whole of art; it's a perspective which won't acknowledge its contingency.

[i.e. the Bible came out of the Church...]

* It's the privilege of those whose beliefs are basically mainstream to think that "realism" and sincerity are good ways of conveying the truth. Only those whose experiences and interpretations line up with mainstream culture can be guaranteed that their sincere heart-baring tales will be believed.

[i.e. sola scriptura seems a good way of conveying the truth to those in communities where sola scriptura is already the standard.]

She also links to someone who writes:

Journaling about some difficult family memories last year, I wrote, "I became a poet so that I could tell the truth without being understood." I hadn't ever realized this until I wrote it down; apparently, transparency is a privilege I don't always grant to myself, let alone other people.

Post-Laborous Day Post

Sayanora says the summer on this the unofficial end, Labor Day.

Long-time readers first-time callers may recall that this is the time of year I traditionally whine about the end of all that is good and true, i.e. the summer.

But perhaps I look at the flowers differently, those beautiful if haunting images(haunting for their obvious transience), and perhaps I can enjoy them in a new way (even for the first time) in not trying to "consume" them. They are nice-to-haves. I realize that no matter how long I gaze at the green trees and landscape that it will never be enough, and that's fine because that's how we were designed. We are designed for more.
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My favorite bible verse may well be where Jesus tells his apostles that He loved them first. Indeed that is the crux of faith, in believing and living that truth. From the Our Lady of Guadalupe book:

"...The Virgin's words express how this is a relationship that already exists. She is already (Juan Diego's) mother. She already holds Juan Diego in her arms. Mary's motherhood affects each of us individually, as she intercedes and cares for us."

Last Things

2009 has been a year of deaths of public people personally influential on me. There's been William F. Buckley, Richard Neuhaus, Michael Dubruiel, and John Updike to name a few.

Reading Christopher Buckley's memoir of his late father's last days has pretty much cured me of my semi-morbid desire to read of anybody's last days, although it did keen my desire to be more like John Paul II in his final days than, say, a Jack Kerouac (God rest his soul). It was John Paul the Great who taught us how to age with dignity, to the extent anyone's earthly example can.

But then, while saying the second decade of the rosary, it occurred to me what a misbegotten project that is because it still focuses only on self. I wasn't really thinking of God in this situation. Unlike St. Joan of Arc, who wanted desperately to see a crucifix while on the stake - because it was there she found her motivation and inspiration. The tendency to focus solely on self multiplies expotentially with pain, understandably.

Love alone avails, even/especially when it concerns performance-related issues like "how am I dealing with this suffering?" Is the question itself the wrong one? Perhaps it's as simple as asking: "God, please give me - all of us - the courage and strength to endure whatever crosses we will face in the future!"

Whereupon I Wax & Wane About My 2-hr Friday Night Camping Trip

It was a land strewn with faeries and faerie lights surrounded by woods and gnawing Augustian insects and curious lit-encirclements which appeared to the naked eye as re-enactments of early-19th century homesteads albeit ahistorical ("must have flush toilets," said the beefy, tatoo'd ex-truck driver brother-in-law and Bluto look-alike with the heart of gold).

I walked our dog along the narrow blacktop'd campground road, cringing inwardly when the klieg lights were colored because it reminded me too much of Christmas and I was morally opposed to seasonal reminders outside of the season because I suffered from rigidity according to my flexible wife. (She could even read in the presence of other campers, a characteristic I longed to ape.)

Our favorite homestead, I say speaking also for my dog although I can't say for sure he agreed, was the one that had old country music playing, so old such that it might only be found on an eight-track tape buried under other eight-tracks in a flea market so obscure that even the fleas wouldn't find it. It sounded Conway Twitty-ish though even I, a wanna-be connoisseur of old time country, couldn't identify song or singer and so I was necessarily filled with wonder. I gaped at the figures sitting around a make-shift country porch, as if they were the wax figures at Madame Tussauds, feeling the same joy of possibility I'd felt as a kid while reading Ripley's Believe it or Not!

The campfire beckoned as I pulled out "one for sorrow, one for joy", Kathleen Norris and a history of the Cincinnati Reds (which is which will be left intentionally ambiguous) and just as the solar grill light lit up the page it lit up the tongues of previously quiet campers.

The air smelt of woodsmoke and ash and the heavens were dotted with seldom-seen stars up there where seldom, if ever, is heard a discouragin' word. All was pleasantly disorienting as I made my way back to the car, the dark making the road only slightly effable and I had not a flashlight with me other than a full yellow moon I named Mary.

The Corporate Nature of Christ

Jesus said, "it was not you who loved me first, but I who loved you." And who can doubt it with respect to the apostles! Their love was weak and tepid until after Pentecost and if Jesus loved the apostles first, he loves even us first too because we know, intuitively, that we're not really any better or worse than the apostles. They were chosen seemingly randomly as representatives of our race. What is possible for them - to be filled with the love of God - is possible for us because God plays no favorites.

I find it consoling that someone as strong & manly as Padre Pio could be more consoled by the epistles of St. Paul than any other part of the Bible. "Whenever I read [Paul's] letters, which I prefer to all other holy writings, words cannot express my relish for them," he wrote. Being beaten around by the devil as he was likely inclines one to a certain amount of humility and compassion such that he could say fervently, "Pray, hope and don't worry". Those prone to hopelessness and despair are the ones mostly likely to preach hope and peace. Those who are already strong have no need of mercy.

Since I was a child the letters of St. Paul were likewise my favorite and I think it's because they are exceedingly encouraging, and they are extremely encouraging because Paul himself was first a persecutor of Christians and so was more gentle than he otherwise might've been, understanding his own weaknesses. And it was inconceivable to him that God might save him but not others. One need look only as far as yesterday's first reading, Colossians 1:9-14:

"Therefore, from the day we heard this, we do not cease praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding to live in a manner worthy of the Lord, so as to be fully pleasing, in every good work bearing fruit and growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with every power, in accord with his glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light."

Paul says boldly that God has made us "fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones". It doesn't get anymore encouraging than that. And we feel it even more keenly because we know that the early Christian communities that Paul was writing to were not exactly paragons of virtue. They squabbled and acted selfishly and were remonstrated for numerous sins, sins that obscure our vision of God but which could be forgiven.

Christians still have to "pass by the dragon" said an early saint. I've heard it said that Christ's suffering was not as long in duration as other people's sufferings, but I think that misses the point in the sense of not fulling understanding the corporate nature of Christ - that He is within us literally and that when we suffer He somehow participates. When I look at a saint like St. Francis, who received the stigmata, I see Christ. If it's hard to differentiate sometimes between Jesus and the Father because they are so close, it's similarly sometimes hard to do so in St. Francis and Jesus, given their mutual earthly miracles and sufferings. The unreal suffering of some tortured martyrs can be understood only supernaturally; they could not have withstood it without God's presence, and in that way Christ suffers much longer than anyone else, through us. We think of ourselves as individuals when God thinks of us much more communally, for what else could it mean that when Adam sinned we all did? What else could it mean that when Christ was redeemed all were redeemed? The imagery of the Body of Christ is not merely an image but a reality we can barely comprehend.

Quotes from Koontz

Read long last night from the Dean Koontz memoir while our dog Buddy went ballistic over some creature living under our shed. Likely a mole, and he's making a moutain out of it. I'd gotten home late and so missed much of the still generous sun and had to be content with the leavenings of small vanishing rays in the deep backyard. This time of year the sun is at such at angle that even the basketball court is shaded by 6 or 6:30. 95% of our house and lawn is shaded between 6 and 8 despite a cloudless sky. The culprit? Neighbor's trees mostly. I set out another chair just in front of the porch which seems to be the last of the late-day sun, a sort of reverse Mr. Freeze spot. Am I obsessive about it? Of course. Free sun is like free beer; I won't kick it out of bed.

Koontz's life seems very livable although tis true he's a ferociously hard worker despite not needing to be. (Has all the money in the world.) He's an interesting figure because he works in part simply out of the recognition that that is part of our earthly repentance. Ah but to do all our work in that spirit! Alack, I lack!

There is a simplicity about him. He'd gotten cynical when teaching high school and thereafter, near despair over how little natural justice there is. But getting a dog restored his wonder and led him to return to his Catholic faith. A providential dog encouraged within him a sense of the mystery of everyday life - another case of the little teaching the strong. "Unless ye become as children..." (Or as dogs.)

He writes of his experience of teaching and it reminds me of how my own sense of wonder had been undermined by the scandals in the Church (most especially one involving a novelist named MacFarlane):

At Mechanicsburg High School, I enjoyed teaching and had a knack for it, but the educational bureaucracy and the theories on which it fed proved to be the opposite of that beautiful machine of natural law, was instead a big, ever-growing, mindless, mechanical leviathan wreaking havoc as it ground through the decades, certain to produce eventually a generation of perfect barbarians. Seeing through to the truth under the illusions that have shaped you is important, but it can be dispiriting and can tie knots in your wonder.

What he says about writers isn't pretty but is something most of us intuitively grasp:

My heroes had long been novelists, and although I met some writers who became good and cherished friends, Gerda and I found this community as a whole to be solipsistic and narcissistic and irrational to such a degree that when I showed her a newspaper story about a university study headlined "80 Percent of People With Writing Talent Show Signs of Schizophrenia", she said, "Can you believe it's only eighty percent?"

What's also interesting is that he would've never gotten the dog except for his humanitarian efforts directed towards serving people with handicaps. It was in reaching out to others that he was ultimately reached. He saw how the dogs helped the wheel-chair bound, and when one of the dogs was injured during training he was asked to become an owner. He said yes.

Two Can Play at that Game

... just call me a Grandpa at 46 - my stepson's wife is pregnant! :-)

St. John of the Cross in the Word Among Us

From the latest Word Among Us here and here:

When people read John of the Cross’ two books, Ascent of Mount Carmel or Dark Night of the Soul, they tend to come away overwhelmed.

John can sound so demanding that we think to ourselves, “How can I possibly live out his words today? Do I really have to suffer as much as he did—or as much as he talks about it?” But I believe that when we understand John’s view of the Christian life, we discover a very human and complete path to God.

So in these next two articles, I want to look at John’s teaching from another angle—an angle that will help us draw closer to God. I want to show how John’s teachings really are encouraging and hopeful, and how he is convinced that all of us can come to the point where we are able to love each other with the very love that God has for us...

He is also clear that this emptying can be painful despite the good work that is going on inside. In other words, for the transformation to occur, we need to surrender.

This is where many people find John to be too harsh or demanding. But while he does talk about the pain involved in dying to our old life, John makes it clear that this is something we begin to desire because of the love we are experiencing:

In that sweet drink of God, in which the soul is imbibed in him, the soul most willingly and with intense delight surrender wholly to him, in the desire to be totally his and never to possess anything other than him… . And since he transforms the soul in himself, he makes it entirely his own and empties it of all it possesses other than him. (The Spiritual Canticle, 27, 6)

There is no doubt that for John of the Cross, God does everything. But this does not mean that we remain passive, merely sitting back and waiting. Rather, God challenges us to enter into the process by actively loving and surrendering to him. In fact, he wants us to become as active as the flames of love by which his Spirit transforms us.
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According to John, it is God who gives us everything that is necessary to put off the old life and put on the new life—to change and focus fully on him. This process is a pure gift, an undeserved grace. It is not something we can accomplish on our own and it does not happen overnight. Rather, the process occurs over a lifetime, within the concrete circumstances and events of our lives