Part of a poem found on First Things

But, night will soften
and the faithful countenance of sun will brighten
the penumbra of death (foul-breathed, sharp-fanged canine)
and chase this rabid dog from our brother’s crate.
Ave and Pater, my fingers towards heaven
ascending, meditating on metaphysics
and these most glorious mysteries. Yes, the five
which may hold a clue as to what this life is for.
As Sun opens sleepy eye, he makes Lilith re-
treat westward, screeching through the dark night. She goes to
hide with hound in hell, knowing well that Light has won.

--Matthew Stanford

American Idle

From a Washington Post article:

Whether entertainment as we experience it equals leisure no doubt is debatable, but we have so completely blurred the line between work and play that it often is very hard to tell which is which....

No, we probably don't allow ourselves enough vegging-out time at the pool or on the beach, but on the other hand we have to make a real effort if we want to escape all those people trying to entertain us for one reason or another.

That's fine so far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Gini does quote Aldous Huxley's description of our "almost infinite appetite for distractions," but his discussion of the subject is mostly focused on the places to which we go for vacation or leisure, such as those mentioned above, and our infatuation with "gadgets and toys like Jet Skis, roller blades, and mountain bikes." The truth, though, is that we're being distracted even when we don't realize it, by the all-pervasive entertainment culture. This adds dimensions to Gini's subject that in some cases he simply fails to acknowledge and in others passes over too lightly.

There are some things he's right about. Leisure may be a walk in the country or a roller-coaster ride in an amusement park, but it also should be "time given to contemplation, wonder, awe, and the development of ideas." Too much of such leisure time as is given to us on weekends is spent at work of one sort or another, especially in two-earner households. Our inclination to "seek comfort and consolation in the pleasures and products of shopping" has brought us to the point that for some it becomes "an addiction, a fetish, a diversion, an obsession." The same is true for many of those who seek the same satisfactions in spectator sports.

Captions...We've Got Captions....We've Got Lots and Lots of Captions

A new form of blogger comedy has been exploited here... I can't leave a good thing be:

"Nice, but do you play tuba?"

"Getting closer!"

"Don't worry...you didn't break the skin!"

"Halitosis, schmalitosis!"

Mystery and Beauty

I recall reading in JPII's Love and Responsibility a passage about how infatuation is aided and abetted by the fact that the other person possesses much mystery and so we use our imagination to "fill in the blanks" with qualities so bright they can only be dimly cogitated. I realized this was not unlike what I do with poems, with Eliot or Joyce. The proximate cause of this thought was reading that John Updike liked TS Eliot as a child even though he was only dimly aware of what it meant, and I suddenly wondered if that was actually an advantage in some ways. He writes, "Once I borrowed "The Waste Land," having seen it mentioned in The New Yorker as a modern classic, and found its opacity pleasingly crisp..."

The opacity itself is pleasing! I indirectly blogged about this in posting a poem titled "Found at the Confluence of Fotos & Babelfish". I had put the Hernan González's Spanish blog thru Babelfish but the resulting phrases had "holes" of untranslatable words (at least untranslatable by Babelfish) and into those gaps I could imagine the most piquant pleasures! I suddenly felt sorry for Hernan, who knows what the words mean. (No great tragedy, but I'm sure you see what I'm driving at). The poem went:

evocative of their childhood chaqueña
in the gallery of Flowery street 681
I ran into one of those gratuitous recitales
with a conjuntito of tango
those "bitter" cortazianos personages
apostatized of the humanity and the cosmos
as consolation and psychic food

to prevail and to affect, through the elegance
of here cerquita and yesterday just
to ayunar as God commands.

Blessed are they who do not see, but still believe

Some interesting thoughts here and here on the question "Why Ascend?". It's something I've wondered about too. What follows are my own un-imprimatur'd thoughts. Correct and reprove accordingly.

I think the Ascension was necessary because faith is so highly regarded in the heavenly kingdom that obstructing it, through obvious displays of power, lessens our reward. The Resurrected Jesus in the flesh is very obviously a display of power. Faith, like charity, is a big denomination of currency in the spiritual realm. By being present to us, He would perhaps be obstructing our faith by taking away some of our free will, thus lessening the currency we would have to spend in heaven.

There is speculation that our Blessed Mother didn't receive a post-Resurrection visit from Jesus because she didn't need it. It's certainly possible that He did appear to her and it just isn't recorded, but some say that such appearance would be extraneous given Mary's great faith, and miracles aren't for gratification - they serve a purpose. Those visited by supernatural events (like St. Paul on the road to Damascus) suffer proportionately the greater for it, often martyrdom.

Jeanne Schmelzer comments on Disputations:
I myself have seen and have participated in physical and spiritual healings. I had a tumor in my jaw healed when prayed with. I've had spiritual healings of relationships repaired of which I was unable to repair myself. The reason I believe I was healed wasn't to try to get me to believe, because I already did. It was to show how much Jesus loved and cared for me when I felt terribly abandoned, and that he was around and available to me. It did build my strong faith to be even stronger.

The Saints Say:

St. Augustine: "But could He not send Him while here, Him, Who, we know, came and abode on Him at His baptism, yea Him from Whom we know He never could be spearated? What meaneth then, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come until you", but, ye cannot receive the Spirit, so long as ye know Christ according to the flesh? Christ departing in the body, not the Holy Ghost only, but the Father, and the Son also came spirtually."

St. Gregory: "As if He said plainly, if I withdraw not My body from your eyes, I cannot lead you to the understanding of the Invisible, through the Comforting Spirit."

Augustine: "The Holy Ghost the Comforter brought this, that the form of a servant which our Lord had received in the womb of the Virgin, being removed from the fleshly eye, He was manifested to the purified mental vision in the very form of God in which He remained equal to the Father, even while He deigned to appear in the flesh."

They'd Not Forgotten How to Cringe

It is well-nigh irresistible to read time-period pieces, to travel back in time, tainted though the essays might be by prejudices of the moment. Read part of "The Causes of the War" by Charles Horne, written in the 1920s (the war in the title being, of course, WWI). The prescience, written before Hitler took power, is astonishing. One is tempted to say, "Mr. Horne, you ain't seen nothin' yet":

The world has never before seen such astounding examples of mass-hypnosis, the instant uprising on command of a fervid and genuine emotion in an entire people. Ther German government had only to give its order, "Hate the Britons, they have suddenly snared our straightforward goverment in a trap long prepared!" and the German people swung to the new emotion with the smoothness of a pendulum and the regularity of a military platoon.

Why?

For centuries Germany had been divided into hundreds of little semi-independent states, seldom united in actions either of peace or war. In consequence, the land had been repeatedly ravaged by victorious foreign armies; the people had learned their helplessness, and had learned, alas, to cringe and bend before the storm. Then under Prussian leadership, quite suddenly after 1866, they became strong in a military sense, the strongest nation in the world. Had such strength come to them slowly, with the training in pity and in kindly tolerance that should go with strength, the German people might have grown worthy of their high position. But alas, power had come too swiftly to allow of that gradual development of racial character which requires many generations. The Germans had not forgotten how to cringe....The coward knows no law save that of brute force. Give him the upper hand and he will surely use it like a brute.

Saw the CBS mini-series "Hitler: the Rise of Evil" this weekend. It was interesting to see how the fully reality of Hitler's maliciousness dawned on different people at different times - some were early warning "canary in coalmine" types, others were sympathizers even to the war and beyond. It helps to occasionally look above the "three yeards and a cloud of dust" of our own seemingly petty battles and see where a trail of bad decisions lead. Evil seems to serve a purpose on earth - most obviously in Christ's expiating death, but also in its effect in driving us to God and sanity. A friend of my father hadn't said a rosary in twenty years; he got down on his knees and said one immediately after seeing "The Exorcist".

On an unrelated note, except in demonstrating how an individual in power can hypnotize, I caught a mesmerizing bit of C-Span. They taped a college class invited to ask Q & A of former Pres. Clinton at his Little Rock library. The class was in full adoration mode, the young women smiled at him incandescently. (A friend jokes that he's never seen a look of womanly lust as pure as the one George Stephanapolis received from a fellow staffer after Clinton's victory as presented in the documentary "The War Room". This class at least gave that moment a run for its money). One of the women said, "I have a personal question for you Mr. President. My sister is disabled, and she got a lot of help during your time in office, but now it's much more difficult. I just want to know...(starts to break down) ...I just want to know why you care so much." Clinton studies his shoes for a second, his face reddens and after a long pause, his voice choking with emotion, says "My momma raised me right". The young women began to cry and the teacher walked over to comfort her. It was downright hypnotizing. It's also helpful for those in need of a purgative.

Nigerian Scammer Alert

I had begun to think the Nigerian scammers didn't like my fiction. How else to explain the lack of their spams of late? I typically answer with some fine fictional effort, a sort of tit for tat. Another has stepped up to the plate, this one exceedingly distasteful in wrapping the ruse in religious clothing, which I'm editing out:

Living Christ Mission,
16 rue de la plage,
Telephone : 00229-963140
Cotonou, Republique du Benin.

Dear beloved one,

Greetings I bring to you. I am Pastor Joseph, of the living Christ Mission Cotonou, the Republique du Benin.I am contacting you in confidence as a foreigner, to help claim the fund of Bro Gideon Brown,which is lying low in a security company in Europe. I happened to come in contact with Bro Gideon Brown who is a British national residing here in Cotonou the Republique du Benin with his wife.

After much digression and chit-chat he says,

Also, bro Gideon's wife, asked me to find out how much percentage would be given to you as one willing to help in the claim of this fund.

I had been worrying if there was anything in it for me.

Here is my tentative reply:

Pasture Joe, thank you for your missive. As a fellow fiction writer, I feel a certain solidarity.

I admit to being caught off guard in that I have nothing freshly written, and I think it would be untoward to offer something stale. But I do have this science fiction novella, co-written..

(Nah, that would be too cruel).

Bone Update

For those following the Hambone saga (KTC?), today is his last day although he has an interview Tuesday in another area within the company. The severance package, twelve week's pay, looms over him irresistibly; he has already mentally fornicated with the money, er, mentally spent the money (the spending being paying for law school and new windows). He promised his wife the new windows and now despairs at the thought of having to cut his savings rate from 20% to 16% in order to afford them. He rushes to his lump-sum payout as sailors did to Scylla's deadly embrace, "the monstrous lips, the darting neck of their love-death" as the poet Donald Davidson wrote. He admits the hand of God in this, the lesson that money doth not avail.

He says, "Let me play Percy to your Foote" and he explains that it is not his depression depressing him, it is that he has no reason to be depressed. Percy wrote about this condition often, this feeling that you can have everything - wife, family, money - without it availing. He understands, intellectually at least, that the job, if he gets it, is infinitely preferable to many other jobs, such as cleaning toilets or writing speeches for Presidential "hopeful" Dennis Kucinich.

So, the prospect of a patch of freedom, of writing screenplays, appeals to him, yet the hope of a steady job does too. He sits in the valley of despair, dreading the worst - that he gets the job but no severance. He fears that because he still has an interview outstanding, they will postpone the ceremonial "cutting of the check" until after the results of this job lead.

He asks a hard question: how will I know if I am detached from the money? "If I give the whole lump sum to charity?" "10%?"

UPDATE: Ham of Bone received his severance check, or at least the guarantee of it.

Women Are the Gatekeepers

NRO's The Corner published an email:

Dear Jonah:
Your reader, and your comment on social life in college, have hit upon the great truth that was Socrates's argument for the education of women: In general, men will do more or less whatever women want, so the key to a good society is to educate women to want the right things.

Top Ten Books On The New York City Schools Summer Reading List

10. "Horton Hears A Gunshot"

9. "The Postman Always Rings Twice...Then Breaks The Window And Steals Your Home Entertainment Center"

8. "'Promotion,' 'Bonus' And Other Words You Will Never Hear After Attending A New York City School"

7. "Encyclopedia Brown And The Mystery Of The Dead Guy On The Subway"

6. "Lord Of The Flies, And Other Street Vendor Names"

5. "A Farewell To Strip Joints Thanks To That Nose Bleed Giuliani"

4. "Moby Dick's Self-Destructive Cousin Andy Dick"

3. "A Clockwork Orange That Reads 'Rolex' But Only Costs $10"

2. "Men Are From Mars, Hillary Clinton's From Arkansas, Damn It!"

1. "Of Mice And Donuts"

- David Letterman

"Horton Hears a Gunshot" cracks me up.

Lots o' Prayer

Out of curiosity I picked up a couple of the flyers in the breezeway of church. They were pamphlets on religious orders, complete with their daily schedules:

Sister Servants of the Eternal Word pray five hours a day and work five hours a day.
Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration pray some six hours a day and work 4 hours a day.

Pondering Mark 16:17-18

The words from Mark's Gospel (Mark 16:17-18) seemed more difficult to comprehend that usual today, coming on the heels of the discouraging news concerning Dylan. It seemed there were two options with respect to the latter: either it isn't God's will at this time to heal him or the faith and sacrifice of St. Blog's was lacking. There seems a hierarchical element to prayer - Jesus' prayer was more effective than the apostles, the apostles more than saints (the apostles raised the dead) and the saints more than us. I went to my beloved commentaries.

First the verses:

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

The Ignatius Study Bible - the Gospel of Mark - shrunk from the question.

Orchard's "Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture" didn't flinch:

When sending the Apostles on a temporary mission in Palestine, Christ gave them power to cast out demons in order to strengthen the appeal of their preaching. Now he promises to believers miraculous signs to guarantee the truth and divine origin of the doctrine which they had accepted. The promise is made to the community of the faithful rather than to each individual believer. In the early days of the Church, possibly becuase of a greater need for extraordinary signs in order to move a skeptical and hostile world to which the Gospel and Church were still new, some of these manifestations of miraculous power were more frequent than in later times. But Christ's promise is not limited to a particular period. In every age miracles have given proof that Christ abides with the Church.

From the Catena Aurea:

St. Gregory: Are we then without faith because we cannot do these signs? Nay, but these things were necessary in the beginning of the Church, for the faith of believers was to be nourished by miracles, that it might increase. Thus we also, when we plant groves, pour water upon them, until we see that they have grown strong in the earth; but when once they have firmly fixed their roots, we leave off irrigating them. These signs and miracles have other things which we ought to consider more minutely. For Holy Church does every day in spirit what then the Apostles did in body.

I tend to make the mistake of assuming universal applications to everything in the Gospels, when sometimes passages are meant merely for the Apostles ears. Similar are some of the predictions that pre-figure the catastrophe (for the Jews) in 70AD.

On the Wagon...

...from silliness. It was all I could do to refrain from commenting "Limbo? Don't like it. Hurts my back." on Tom's blog. Completely inappropriate. (Speaking of his blog, it was sad to see to see it didn't get a mention in Mark Shea's article on St. Blog's parish in this month's Crisis).

The discussion on unbaptized babies is a critical thing because it very effectively exposes the "head" thinking versus "heart". I am literally surrounded by heart thinkers w/r/to religion. One PIQ (person in question) believes in all her heart that a good God would not be capable of not having animals in heaven (I'm tempted to say 'please not mosquitoes...please!'). Another close PIQ simply cannot imagine a God who would consider using artificial birth control as a sin leading unto death. She said, "I would rather go to hell than have had another kid," which immediately shut down that conversation although it begged the question, "you mean than foregoing sex?". Certainly it is a hard teaching, but easier than telling homosexuals not to engage in homosexual acts.

As far as Limbo, it is natural, and nearly overpowering, to want certainty as to the destiny of your child, if he/she died before Baptism. Perhaps the Scriptures were designed, albeit unsatisfyingly, to focus thusly:"What are the implications of the Gospel for me?," not, "What are the implications for a class of persons to which I do not belong? as Tom wrote.

Back in the U.S....

There is something Dali-like surreal in seeing a clip of Paul McCartney playing "Back in the U.S.S.R" in Red Square, Moscow to thousands of Russian youth. Having grown up in the 70s, the Soviet Union seemed so serious, and lended that sobriety to our every move. Now having a pop star play outside the Kremlin, is, well, like having Madonna sing "Like a Virgin" in Tehran.