ComFest Update
Follow up to my reportage...Music critic Petric in The Other Paper reviewed ComFest (this article's not online unfortunately) and told an amusing/disturbing anecdote.
Between bands a soundguy put the Lee Greenwood song "God Bless the USA" on as a joke. The manager and organizer of ComFest runs over and is fuming. He screams, "Turn that f-cking thing off! Shut it down, now!".
That song is like a red cape before a bull, which I really don't get. I don't think the lyrics are that controversial, are they? I mean he doesn't croon anything about tax cuts or war or pro-life. Oh yeah, God is mentioned.
July 09, 2003
Praising Disputes
Ye oft-quoted Dominican Friar said that he wants couples to fight, or at least have disputes.
They ask him to preside at their wedding and he asks, "Have you had arguments and disagreements?"
"Oh no Father, we get along fine, we never fight."
"Then go back and have a fight and come back afterwards."
His point is that it is only in disputes that we show our virtue or vice, and that couples find out more about the other person in fighting than in loving. Especially given that dating you tend to see only the best side of the person. He wonders at the quality of a marriage if there are not disputes and intense arguments.
This was background for his talk on Jacob wrestling the angel, which was symbolic of the whole history of Israel. In fact, "Israel" means "wrestles with God". And Father suggests this is sometimes necessary in our relationship with God, for some of the same reasons quoted above.
Ye oft-quoted Dominican Friar said that he wants couples to fight, or at least have disputes.
They ask him to preside at their wedding and he asks, "Have you had arguments and disagreements?"
"Oh no Father, we get along fine, we never fight."
"Then go back and have a fight and come back afterwards."
His point is that it is only in disputes that we show our virtue or vice, and that couples find out more about the other person in fighting than in loving. Especially given that dating you tend to see only the best side of the person. He wonders at the quality of a marriage if there are not disputes and intense arguments.
This was background for his talk on Jacob wrestling the angel, which was symbolic of the whole history of Israel. In fact, "Israel" means "wrestles with God". And Father suggests this is sometimes necessary in our relationship with God, for some of the same reasons quoted above.
July 08, 2003
St. Louis Redux
I awoke Saturday morning with visions of the German Biergarten in my head, of tubas and oooom-pahs, drinking microbrews under the St. Louis sun. That was our plan in Hermann, Mo., a little German enclave about sixty miles outside of St. Louis. Mark had read about this in a tour book, so you know it's got to be true, but alas when we arrived there was only a one-man jazzman at a local winery. Reports of tubas in Hermann were greatly exaggerated.
I shrugged this disappointment off with the help of some wine tasting and later lunch, where I told Anna Marie, who had never had Muenster cheese before, that this is a special "Hermann Muenster" cheese. (Insert groan here). I tried the sampler platter - knackwurst, sauerbraten and something else - and it was surprisingly good given my low expectations. My ancestors in Germany and Ireland didn't always eat well, but they certainly drank well. The German biers and Irish stout are second to none.
We visited the wine cellar, deliciously medieval, filled with the musty fog of fermenting grape. A labyrinth of cavernous arches, I agilely scaled one wall to reach an opening to see a view - of more small cubbys where bones lay in mouldering heaps, at least in my imagination. We came to a sign that said, "No Visitors Past This Point" and walked past the sign, in verboten territory, for photo purposes. We are so jejune.
No one wanted to listen to the jazzman play in the 100 degree heat, so we visited the local Catholic Church up on the hill and absorbed the beautiful stained glass windows depicting the spiritual and corporal works of mercy (such as St. Elizabeth of Hungary feeding the hungry). There was also a representation of St. Louis himself, which I made a point of reading up on since my knowledge of the 13th century Crusader & king was vague.
Saturday night we went to the Irish pub in town, McGurk's, and the food (Gaelic steak) was surprisingly good. In fact it was more restaurant than pub. Sunday morning we arrived at St. Louis Cathedral early and gawked at the spectacular mosaics.
I awoke Saturday morning with visions of the German Biergarten in my head, of tubas and oooom-pahs, drinking microbrews under the St. Louis sun. That was our plan in Hermann, Mo., a little German enclave about sixty miles outside of St. Louis. Mark had read about this in a tour book, so you know it's got to be true, but alas when we arrived there was only a one-man jazzman at a local winery. Reports of tubas in Hermann were greatly exaggerated.
I shrugged this disappointment off with the help of some wine tasting and later lunch, where I told Anna Marie, who had never had Muenster cheese before, that this is a special "Hermann Muenster" cheese. (Insert groan here). I tried the sampler platter - knackwurst, sauerbraten and something else - and it was surprisingly good given my low expectations. My ancestors in Germany and Ireland didn't always eat well, but they certainly drank well. The German biers and Irish stout are second to none.
We visited the wine cellar, deliciously medieval, filled with the musty fog of fermenting grape. A labyrinth of cavernous arches, I agilely scaled one wall to reach an opening to see a view - of more small cubbys where bones lay in mouldering heaps, at least in my imagination. We came to a sign that said, "No Visitors Past This Point" and walked past the sign, in verboten territory, for photo purposes. We are so jejune.
No one wanted to listen to the jazzman play in the 100 degree heat, so we visited the local Catholic Church up on the hill and absorbed the beautiful stained glass windows depicting the spiritual and corporal works of mercy (such as St. Elizabeth of Hungary feeding the hungry). There was also a representation of St. Louis himself, which I made a point of reading up on since my knowledge of the 13th century Crusader & king was vague.
Saturday night we went to the Irish pub in town, McGurk's, and the food (Gaelic steak) was surprisingly good. In fact it was more restaurant than pub. Sunday morning we arrived at St. Louis Cathedral early and gawked at the spectacular mosaics.
Of Modern Doubt
Mark of Particulae (sounds like Pio of Petrelcina or Francis of Assisi doesn't it?) and Amy and Hernan all have interesting posts on modern doubt.
Dr. Geraghty of EWTN's online forum (doctor of philosophy) has some interesting thoughts on the subject.
First, he answers a very long letter-writer who describes his angst concerning the unfairness of the original temptation in the Garden, of the scandal of particularity, etc... with this:
I found this interesting because the ancients and not-so-ancients really had an acute sense of their own sinfulness and that is perhaps a gateway to faith..certainly it provides a thirst for the remedy.
Dr. Geraghty also had this to say concerning his wife's conversion:
These responses seem somewhat contradictory. In the first, it's as if a lack of faith is the query writer's fault (in arrogantly not seeing his own sinfulness). In the second, it is seen as gift. This cooperation between man and God is typically a tangled weave - how much one is responsible for one's faith who can say? But I am struck by how Jesus in the Gospel's was often hard on those without faith. "O Ye of little faith!" he'd say. Jesus would surely not chastize those who were not given a gift, so that implies a two-way street of some sort. But Peter's confession of faith was recognized as what it was - a gift from above. It appeals to my laziness to think it a gift, but is at the same time discomfiting, given my desire for control. Faith easily gotten often triggers a sort of religious equivalent to the "smug marrieds" of Bridget Jones fame.
In this third comment, Dr. takes a rather rigorous "act of the will" point of view:
Mark of Particulae (sounds like Pio of Petrelcina or Francis of Assisi doesn't it?) and Amy and Hernan all have interesting posts on modern doubt.
Dr. Geraghty of EWTN's online forum (doctor of philosophy) has some interesting thoughts on the subject.
First, he answers a very long letter-writer who describes his angst concerning the unfairness of the original temptation in the Garden, of the scandal of particularity, etc... with this:
Let me ask you this question: Do you think that you are capable of being evil that you could do deeds that would danm your soul for all eternity? In other words, do you think that you are a sinner? The reason I ask is that, while all Catholics are brought up on the idea that we are sinners in need of redemption, we often do not feel like or really think that we are sinners. In such a case the practice of true religion becomes irksome to us. Catholicism is designed for sinners-- are you a sinner? If you are not, then it is not the religion for you. You won't fit.
I found this interesting because the ancients and not-so-ancients really had an acute sense of their own sinfulness and that is perhaps a gateway to faith..certainly it provides a thirst for the remedy.
Dr. Geraghty also had this to say concerning his wife's conversion:
My wife tells me that, when she was an atheist who wanted to believe in the Church, she saw a priest and kept pounding him with questions about how she could not believe. The priest tried to answer her but she was not satisified. So finally he said: "Look, faith is a gift of God. And God did not give it to you yet." Somehow, my wife says, that made her relax. Just because she wanted something from God did not mean that she would automatically get it. Anyway, she relaxed because she realized that the whole matter of faith was not entirely up to her. So she kept waiting in hope and more peace. The odd thing is that, when she got the gift of faith, she could not remember the exact time when she got it. The gift came to her and she was not ever aware of it for a period of time. It seems that you want to believe. That is good. But God in the final analysis gives the gift. We cannot give it to ourselves.
These responses seem somewhat contradictory. In the first, it's as if a lack of faith is the query writer's fault (in arrogantly not seeing his own sinfulness). In the second, it is seen as gift. This cooperation between man and God is typically a tangled weave - how much one is responsible for one's faith who can say? But I am struck by how Jesus in the Gospel's was often hard on those without faith. "O Ye of little faith!" he'd say. Jesus would surely not chastize those who were not given a gift, so that implies a two-way street of some sort. But Peter's confession of faith was recognized as what it was - a gift from above. It appeals to my laziness to think it a gift, but is at the same time discomfiting, given my desire for control. Faith easily gotten often triggers a sort of religious equivalent to the "smug marrieds" of Bridget Jones fame.
In this third comment, Dr. takes a rather rigorous "act of the will" point of view:
Questioner: I INTELLECTUALLY know that God the Father loves us. But I am having trouble in my heart BELIEVING that and I also don't feel a personal relationship with Him. I have tried to discern His love intellectually but I am coming up somehwat empty. I tell myself to look at the beautiful creation He made for us to enjoy (flowers, animals, sunsets, etc) but sometimes feel that it's all one-sided. Primarily, I feel that my spriritual life is based on me pursuing Him and Him maybe responding or maybe not, based on my state of grace at the time. Am I projecting my earthly father into this? Is there something I can read or look at to understand what the God-to-person relationship is about? Is there a real interpersonal relationship? Is it in the form of Christ-to-person instead of Father-to-person? Hope this is a clear question.
Answer by Richard Geraghty: Dear Catechist,
One should keep in mind that in the Catholic view our love for God is basically a decision, an act of the will. Thus we say our prayers and go to Church on this basis. Sometimes there is feeling attached to this. Many times there is not. What is necessary for us is to be steadfast when we do not have the experience or the feeling of love when we approach God. So I would not worry about it. Keep plugging away. God will take care of things here. It can be a danger to us when we begin to worry why we are "experiencing" God in the way perhaps that other people are. Do not worry about the other people. Some of these may be kidding themselves.
July 07, 2003
Looking for Transcendence in All the Wrong Places
Fascinating review of by Daniel Mendelsohn of James Wood's "The Book Against God". Mendelsohn makes the case that Wood is a brutal critic of modern novelists because he is looking for God in them:
Fascinating review of by Daniel Mendelsohn of James Wood's "The Book Against God". Mendelsohn makes the case that Wood is a brutal critic of modern novelists because he is looking for God in them:
Wood's own hidden criterion for books is their ability to deliver transcendence, to provide access to the hidden but immanent truths of the universe. (Or at least to struggle with that transcendence, those truths.) Yet there's only one Good Book that claims to be able to deliver what Wood wants; all other good (and even great) books may provide ecstasy and revelation, but the ecstasy is aesthetic, and the revelation can only be about patchy, inconclusive human things that we already know (since we write the books ourselves). Wood has commented of Nietzsche and Camus that ''both of them realize that God cannot be destroyed by 'philosophy' as such, but can only be exchanged for a form of rival belief'': it seems clear that Wood, having broken with God, has set up the novel as His rival. But he believes in the novel with the unyielding belief of the fundamentalist, rather than the gentler and more complicated passion of the true humanist.
...His dismissal of allegory, of magic realism, and the kind of postmodern narrative halls-of-mirrors you find in DeLillo and his followers -- reminds you that a consideration almost wholly absent from his final judgments is that of aesthetic pleasure, of playfulness, of fun. These may seem frivolous, but for better or worse they are an essential component of the aesthetics of our postmodern era, with its emphasis on self-conscious artfulness and play; to judge the products of this era by 19th-century standards -- which is, essentially, Wood's M.O. -- is to fault an apple for not being an orange.
If a great many contemporary novels indulge in the sins of clever symbolisms, self-consciously allegorical structure, slyly autobiographical references and glib provincial humor, it may be because that's the kind of novel we need to be writing just now -- because that's one way that 21st-century novels react both to their literary forebears and to their anxious times.
Sensual Aesthetics... & other oxymorons
The Pope wrote, in "Love and Responsibility" that
"Beauty is essentially an object of contemplative cognition, and to experience aesthetic values is not to exploit: it gives joy...Thus, sensuality really interferes with apprehension of the beautiful, even of bodily, sensual beauty, for it introduces a consumer attitude to the object: 'the body' is then regarded as a potential object of exploitation."
Mark of Particulae writes:
An obvious and good example of this is our sexuality. Art can appeal to our sexuality in a manner that is wholesome or harmful and a "lowering of standards" in art is not so much a matter of the object being "too low" so much as the use and interpretation of the object being jejune, inappropriate, or foolish.
I've always wondered at how, concretely and in practice, art can appeal to our sexuality in a wholesome way. Maybe it appeals in a very broad or subtle sense. For many, including Ham of Bone and I (we've had many discussions on it) the sensual huddles in the corner and is quite adept at spoiling any potential aesthetic experience that remotely concerns the sexual. Call us jejune, but not late for dinner.
President James Garfield said that "something went out of him that never came back" after seeing so many men killed during the Civil War. That something he said was a "sense of the sacredness of life". Perhaps in a similar way one can never get back a way of looking at sexuality in a wholesome way after abusing it.
Sensuality creates hunger, aesthetics creates appreciation. At the St. Louis Art Museum I found myself in that familiar spot of lurching from the sensual to the aesthetic even though it was a 'fine art' museum. I suppose the fault lies, dear Brutus, not in the stars...
The Pope wrote, in "Love and Responsibility" that
"Beauty is essentially an object of contemplative cognition, and to experience aesthetic values is not to exploit: it gives joy...Thus, sensuality really interferes with apprehension of the beautiful, even of bodily, sensual beauty, for it introduces a consumer attitude to the object: 'the body' is then regarded as a potential object of exploitation."
Mark of Particulae writes:
An obvious and good example of this is our sexuality. Art can appeal to our sexuality in a manner that is wholesome or harmful and a "lowering of standards" in art is not so much a matter of the object being "too low" so much as the use and interpretation of the object being jejune, inappropriate, or foolish.
I've always wondered at how, concretely and in practice, art can appeal to our sexuality in a wholesome way. Maybe it appeals in a very broad or subtle sense. For many, including Ham of Bone and I (we've had many discussions on it) the sensual huddles in the corner and is quite adept at spoiling any potential aesthetic experience that remotely concerns the sexual. Call us jejune, but not late for dinner.
President James Garfield said that "something went out of him that never came back" after seeing so many men killed during the Civil War. That something he said was a "sense of the sacredness of life". Perhaps in a similar way one can never get back a way of looking at sexuality in a wholesome way after abusing it.
Sensuality creates hunger, aesthetics creates appreciation. At the St. Louis Art Museum I found myself in that familiar spot of lurching from the sensual to the aesthetic even though it was a 'fine art' museum. I suppose the fault lies, dear Brutus, not in the stars...
No Quid Pro Quo
Something I'd wished someone would've told me in my less than saintly past:
- The New Faithful by Colleen Carroll, quoting Beth Bonnacci here
Something I'd wished someone would've told me in my less than saintly past:
Bonacci said single Christians - encouraged, at times, by chastity educators to tout the practical benefits of saving sex for marriage - forget that "morality is not a quid pro quo arrangement".
- The New Faithful by Colleen Carroll, quoting Beth Bonnacci here
July 06, 2003
Feelin' the Heat in St. Louis
I could start with the preternatural heat. Seeing 99 on the thermometer got to be routine. And though the saying goes "it's not the heat, it's the humidity", sometimes you get both in spades. Not that I'm complaining; I loathe winter and summer can't hug too tightly.
Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
The ostensible reason for going to St. Louis was to visit Nina and Anna Marie, two longtime friends (I used to call Anna Marie "Santa Maria" and ask where the Pinta was). Nina gave me a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "40 Years Old - That's Dead in Dog Years" this year so I'm re-thinking the friendship thing.
I loaded the truck with lots of “distractions” for what would be a eight-hour drive - daunting for those with a short-attention span. Snuggled close were snacks, a cooler, CDs, the audio book “Tis” by Frank McCourt (purchased for $1 at company garage sale – Bone would be proud), and nostalgia-producing tapes. Favorites included Jimmy Buffet’s tear-enducing “A Pirate at 40”…I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast…never meant to last…, “Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above” by the choir at the National Shrine in Washington (sung in the most plaintive innocence) and “Sweet Home Chicago”, off a nearly decomposed Blues Brothers tape.
But finally I arrived: the famous Arch could’ve been a giant trash-heap and I would’ve thrilled to it simply because it was a symbol that meant the end of the drive. After a quick check-in, we gathered under that same Arch with ten thousand others for something called “Fair St. Louis”, a three-day extravaganza held every July 4th weekend. Playing for free (if it’s free, it’s for me) was country star Brad Paisley, who sings an unabashedly pro-life song. Lots of pickin’ and grinnin’, some blue grass and “How Great Thou Art”. Afterwards, the Arch was the frame for a fabulous fireworks display.
Baseballus Interuptus
On Friday we got back from the museums (Art & Missouri Historical) early enough for me to sneak over to the Border’s Books which was but a stone’s throw from our hotel. I sank into one of the comfortable chairs and read an interesting article on boredom and baseball in the “Atlantic”:
It's there in Philip Roth's essay "My Baseball Years," from Reading Myself and Others: "Baseball—with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategies, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefulness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its 'characters,' its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate—was the literature of my boyhood." Hypnotic tedium. Has anyone ever put it better? Maybe only Don DeLillo, in the prologue to Underworld: "Dodgers go down in the top of the ninth and this is when you sense a helpless scattering, it is tastable in the air, audible in the lone-wolf calls from high in the stands. Nothing you've put into this is recoverable ..."
Unrecoverable. Is it any wonder baseball makes us choke up? Three hours a day, six months a year, the baseball fan commits himself to the game. Multi-tasking or mono-tasking, we carry it wherever we go. He listens. She watches. Next morning they read the game story, scan the box scores. On our deathbeds, surrounded by loved ones we almost remember ("Didn't you fetch me some Twizzlers once?"), we'll add up all the hours. Where is the return on all this time? As it says on the ticket stub, "nonrefundable."
The author, David Kipen, comes to this conclusion:
….Boredom is a luxury of the young... Here, at last, is how baseball works its lachrymose and soporific spell on us: we feel nostalgia and boredom, yes, but more than that, we feel nostalgia for boredom, for youth's immensities of wastable time. The lovely poem "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a man who held no particular brief for baseball one way or the other, begins, "Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?" To be flat-footed about it, Margaret is a girl distraught over the arrival of autumn and the loss of leaves from a favorite copse. For a dozen lines or so the speaker consoles her as best he can. Then, in fittingly arboreal language, he delivers a couplet that distills Margaret's sorrow, and with it that of every grown-up ball fan who ever wondered how a simple game could become so complicated: "It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for."
Blame Rome First
Walking out with just a magazine seemed an anathemna, so I picked up and began reading St. Augustine’s “City of God” and began to consider it a mini-scandal that I don’t have that on my shelves. If I can have DH Lawrence, surely I should have something other than just the Confessions?
So I go to the cashier, a fulsomely-haired and tattooed youth. I give a hearty hello, too hearty apparently, for he smiled and took this as an invitation to minutely inspect and comment on my purchases, something I promise that I will never do if I land the coveted job of bookstore owner.
“I like reading stuff like this,” he says pointing to “City of God”. “I want to read the Thomas gospel, but you just can’t find it anywhere.”
“Oh really? Out of print?” I ask.
“No…the Catholic Church is preventing it from getting out.”
He can tell by my silence I’m underwhelmed.
“You know those are the real words of Jesus…”
“The Catholic Church can’t stop someone from printing something…” I say.
“Yeah but they just don’t like it.”
To Be Continued
I could start with the preternatural heat. Seeing 99 on the thermometer got to be routine. And though the saying goes "it's not the heat, it's the humidity", sometimes you get both in spades. Not that I'm complaining; I loathe winter and summer can't hug too tightly.
Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
The ostensible reason for going to St. Louis was to visit Nina and Anna Marie, two longtime friends (I used to call Anna Marie "Santa Maria" and ask where the Pinta was). Nina gave me a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "40 Years Old - That's Dead in Dog Years" this year so I'm re-thinking the friendship thing.
I loaded the truck with lots of “distractions” for what would be a eight-hour drive - daunting for those with a short-attention span. Snuggled close were snacks, a cooler, CDs, the audio book “Tis” by Frank McCourt (purchased for $1 at company garage sale – Bone would be proud), and nostalgia-producing tapes. Favorites included Jimmy Buffet’s tear-enducing “A Pirate at 40”…I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast…never meant to last…, “Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above” by the choir at the National Shrine in Washington (sung in the most plaintive innocence) and “Sweet Home Chicago”, off a nearly decomposed Blues Brothers tape.
But finally I arrived: the famous Arch could’ve been a giant trash-heap and I would’ve thrilled to it simply because it was a symbol that meant the end of the drive. After a quick check-in, we gathered under that same Arch with ten thousand others for something called “Fair St. Louis”, a three-day extravaganza held every July 4th weekend. Playing for free (if it’s free, it’s for me) was country star Brad Paisley, who sings an unabashedly pro-life song. Lots of pickin’ and grinnin’, some blue grass and “How Great Thou Art”. Afterwards, the Arch was the frame for a fabulous fireworks display.
Baseballus Interuptus
On Friday we got back from the museums (Art & Missouri Historical) early enough for me to sneak over to the Border’s Books which was but a stone’s throw from our hotel. I sank into one of the comfortable chairs and read an interesting article on boredom and baseball in the “Atlantic”:
It's there in Philip Roth's essay "My Baseball Years," from Reading Myself and Others: "Baseball—with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategies, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefulness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its 'characters,' its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate—was the literature of my boyhood." Hypnotic tedium. Has anyone ever put it better? Maybe only Don DeLillo, in the prologue to Underworld: "Dodgers go down in the top of the ninth and this is when you sense a helpless scattering, it is tastable in the air, audible in the lone-wolf calls from high in the stands. Nothing you've put into this is recoverable ..."
Unrecoverable. Is it any wonder baseball makes us choke up? Three hours a day, six months a year, the baseball fan commits himself to the game. Multi-tasking or mono-tasking, we carry it wherever we go. He listens. She watches. Next morning they read the game story, scan the box scores. On our deathbeds, surrounded by loved ones we almost remember ("Didn't you fetch me some Twizzlers once?"), we'll add up all the hours. Where is the return on all this time? As it says on the ticket stub, "nonrefundable."
The author, David Kipen, comes to this conclusion:
….Boredom is a luxury of the young... Here, at last, is how baseball works its lachrymose and soporific spell on us: we feel nostalgia and boredom, yes, but more than that, we feel nostalgia for boredom, for youth's immensities of wastable time. The lovely poem "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a man who held no particular brief for baseball one way or the other, begins, "Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving?" To be flat-footed about it, Margaret is a girl distraught over the arrival of autumn and the loss of leaves from a favorite copse. For a dozen lines or so the speaker consoles her as best he can. Then, in fittingly arboreal language, he delivers a couplet that distills Margaret's sorrow, and with it that of every grown-up ball fan who ever wondered how a simple game could become so complicated: "It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for."
Blame Rome First
Walking out with just a magazine seemed an anathemna, so I picked up and began reading St. Augustine’s “City of God” and began to consider it a mini-scandal that I don’t have that on my shelves. If I can have DH Lawrence, surely I should have something other than just the Confessions?
So I go to the cashier, a fulsomely-haired and tattooed youth. I give a hearty hello, too hearty apparently, for he smiled and took this as an invitation to minutely inspect and comment on my purchases, something I promise that I will never do if I land the coveted job of bookstore owner.
“I like reading stuff like this,” he says pointing to “City of God”. “I want to read the Thomas gospel, but you just can’t find it anywhere.”
“Oh really? Out of print?” I ask.
“No…the Catholic Church is preventing it from getting out.”
He can tell by my silence I’m underwhelmed.
“You know those are the real words of Jesus…”
“The Catholic Church can’t stop someone from printing something…” I say.
“Yeah but they just don’t like it.”
To Be Continued
July 02, 2003
It Is Finished
Every muscle in my body aches. I haven't had a thought deeper than "is it level?" for over 48 hours. I sleep the sleep of the dead each night, my limbs encased in imaginary casts. But the paver patio is finished and looks halfway decent, although around about the 20th hour of work I quit caring. Home improvement projects exist to humble you and also to get you to the point of asking, "I really don't want this ---fill-in-the-blank--- as much as I thought I did". Fortunately, you're half-done and you can't leave it half-done, so that compels you to finish... When I was a four-year old, I wanted to be a "digger man", i.e. construction worker. Be careful what you wish for.
After I put the sand down, the next morning I woke to find that one of our cats thought it a nice big kitty litter. They left a dead mouse as a compensatory "offering".
Every muscle in my body aches. I haven't had a thought deeper than "is it level?" for over 48 hours. I sleep the sleep of the dead each night, my limbs encased in imaginary casts. But the paver patio is finished and looks halfway decent, although around about the 20th hour of work I quit caring. Home improvement projects exist to humble you and also to get you to the point of asking, "I really don't want this ---fill-in-the-blank--- as much as I thought I did". Fortunately, you're half-done and you can't leave it half-done, so that compels you to finish... When I was a four-year old, I wanted to be a "digger man", i.e. construction worker. Be careful what you wish for.
After I put the sand down, the next morning I woke to find that one of our cats thought it a nice big kitty litter. They left a dead mouse as a compensatory "offering".
in the spirit of the Onion
July 1, 2003 - The Westchester Daily - since 1903
Area Blogger Eschews "I"
Area blogger Thomas O'Reilly has forsworn the use of the personal pronoun "I" in blog posts. This despite referring to himself 12,842 times over the past nine blogging months.
"I just decided I was too focused on "I" and was constantly inserting me, me, me in my posts," O'Reilly said. "I'm tired of foisting my opinions on others just because they are my opinions".
When asked how long he thought he could forswear "I", O'Reilly said, "for the rest of the week at least".
Local pundits look for an increase in phrases like "one would think..." and "It occurs to this mind..." to compensate.
July 1, 2003 - The Westchester Daily - since 1903
Area Blogger Eschews "I"
Area blogger Thomas O'Reilly has forsworn the use of the personal pronoun "I" in blog posts. This despite referring to himself 12,842 times over the past nine blogging months.
"I just decided I was too focused on "I" and was constantly inserting me, me, me in my posts," O'Reilly said. "I'm tired of foisting my opinions on others just because they are my opinions".
When asked how long he thought he could forswear "I", O'Reilly said, "for the rest of the week at least".
Local pundits look for an increase in phrases like "one would think..." and "It occurs to this mind..." to compensate.
July 01, 2003
Unity in Diversity
One difference between Pentecost and the Tower of Babel was that at Pentecost everyone spoke in a different tongue and yet was still understood, while the opposite occurred in the story of the Tower of Babel. The experience of Pentecost could be seen as a metaphor for the saints who are unique but still a unity.
Part of what makes saints who they are, I think, is their confidence. Confidence in God, yes, but also a confidence in their unique vision of God, their personal relationship. They weren’t wishy-washy and didn't seem to say, "on the other hand..." a lot. St. Jerome was prickly and didn't suffer fools gladly - others might've seen this as a fault, but Jerome was apparently sanguine about it. He was confident in what he believed God wanted him to be. St. Therese of the Little Flower was fearless in her reliance on God's mercy. Other saints might emphasis justice, but she was supremely confident of what her relationship with God was telling her. Saints fill vital roles - imagine the Church without Jerome's scholarship or St. Therese's correction of the Jansenist tendency and one realizes the Potter is at work in their clay.
One difference between Pentecost and the Tower of Babel was that at Pentecost everyone spoke in a different tongue and yet was still understood, while the opposite occurred in the story of the Tower of Babel. The experience of Pentecost could be seen as a metaphor for the saints who are unique but still a unity.
Part of what makes saints who they are, I think, is their confidence. Confidence in God, yes, but also a confidence in their unique vision of God, their personal relationship. They weren’t wishy-washy and didn't seem to say, "on the other hand..." a lot. St. Jerome was prickly and didn't suffer fools gladly - others might've seen this as a fault, but Jerome was apparently sanguine about it. He was confident in what he believed God wanted him to be. St. Therese of the Little Flower was fearless in her reliance on God's mercy. Other saints might emphasis justice, but she was supremely confident of what her relationship with God was telling her. Saints fill vital roles - imagine the Church without Jerome's scholarship or St. Therese's correction of the Jansenist tendency and one realizes the Potter is at work in their clay.
Excerpts from David Mills' Saints' Guide to Knowing the Real Jesus
Picture to yourself what the Christian promise of salvation means. It means that heaven can include Uncle Charlie with his joy but without his lust and gluttony, and Aunt Betty with her compassion but without her fear and anxiety, and your friend Mark with his wit but without his cruelty and condescension.St. Teresa of Avila prayed “..that I may know who my Creator is in order to love him”, which is really what David Mill's book is about.
And you as well, without all those ingrown sins that have made you and others unhappy (most of which you don’t know about) but with your gifts (most of which you don’t know about either) fully developed. It means that you will no longer be a prime example of St. Paul’s saying that the good he wants to do he doesn’t do, and the evil he doesn’t want to do, he does anyway.
In C.S. Lewis’ book “The Great Divorce”, those who have just arrived in heaven are almost transparent and can’t walk on the grass because it hurts their soft feet. They are barely real because they are not very good. Only those who let go of the besetting sin that has warped their life and personality can be truly themselves enough to enjoy heaven and grow more real as they draw nearer to God.
Various & Sundry
Blogging will be light while I try to hand-dig a swimming pool in my back yard.
At least that's what if feels like.
When I close my eyes I see shovels of dirt endlessly transported by a wheel barrow that occasionally mutates into a barrow (the wheel is falling off). Five soft-drinks, three beers and eight hours later, the pit still looks painfully shallow.
The idea was to put in a paver patio, without using sod-cutters or other fancy-schmancy equipment. My first stab was to just pull up the sod and lay the stones. But after some experiment it became clear I needed to dig down six inches and start with a layer of gravel. Then sand.... So 'nuff said, I'm boring even myself here.
*
In other news, got an email from Jeanne whose husband is a non-reader but read "East of Eden". She reports that he stayed engrossed until he finished the book and then commented, "At least there aren't any big words that I don't understand here."
I do like Steinbeck's stripped down, elegant prose. Given John Updike's decorative prose, this is a refreshing change. "East of Eden" is overly long and has some sections that could've been edited, but there a a few passages that have REALLY stuck with me. I recently read TC Boyle's "Drop City" and while I was just as engrossed (if not more so) there is nothing in that book that I marked with a high-lighter and will want to re-read.
Blogging will be light while I try to hand-dig a swimming pool in my back yard.
At least that's what if feels like.
When I close my eyes I see shovels of dirt endlessly transported by a wheel barrow that occasionally mutates into a barrow (the wheel is falling off). Five soft-drinks, three beers and eight hours later, the pit still looks painfully shallow.
The idea was to put in a paver patio, without using sod-cutters or other fancy-schmancy equipment. My first stab was to just pull up the sod and lay the stones. But after some experiment it became clear I needed to dig down six inches and start with a layer of gravel. Then sand.... So 'nuff said, I'm boring even myself here.
*
In other news, got an email from Jeanne whose husband is a non-reader but read "East of Eden". She reports that he stayed engrossed until he finished the book and then commented, "At least there aren't any big words that I don't understand here."
I do like Steinbeck's stripped down, elegant prose. Given John Updike's decorative prose, this is a refreshing change. "East of Eden" is overly long and has some sections that could've been edited, but there a a few passages that have REALLY stuck with me. I recently read TC Boyle's "Drop City" and while I was just as engrossed (if not more so) there is nothing in that book that I marked with a high-lighter and will want to re-read.
June 29, 2003
Literary Elitism
Mark tells it like it is with respect to a creeping elitism:
... I wonder if "difficult" sometimes refers to the accessibility of a work to someone of average intelligence and education more than its literary depth. A book might be difficult if it constantly makes references to other literature or distant events or cultural proclivities that I as a person of average intelligence and education find difficult because the references are too esoteric and most people with my background wouldn't know them.
Oprah has been so villified that some are now taking shots at Steinbeck's "East of Eden", as if she is tainting Steinbeck by mere association....
I once sent a lefty colleague this, which makes some immoderate claims about war but then the reasonable "sometimes the herd is right" and he reacted viscerally, completely turned off by that more than the controversial stuff at the beginnning... I recall emailing a blogger/columnist/lapsed Catholic who said she wasn't so much a liberal as an elitist... Least he/she was honest.
Mark tells it like it is with respect to a creeping elitism:
... I wonder if "difficult" sometimes refers to the accessibility of a work to someone of average intelligence and education more than its literary depth. A book might be difficult if it constantly makes references to other literature or distant events or cultural proclivities that I as a person of average intelligence and education find difficult because the references are too esoteric and most people with my background wouldn't know them.
Oprah has been so villified that some are now taking shots at Steinbeck's "East of Eden", as if she is tainting Steinbeck by mere association....
I once sent a lefty colleague this, which makes some immoderate claims about war but then the reasonable "sometimes the herd is right" and he reacted viscerally, completely turned off by that more than the controversial stuff at the beginnning... I recall emailing a blogger/columnist/lapsed Catholic who said she wasn't so much a liberal as an elitist... Least he/she was honest.
Supreme Court Says End Justifies the Means
What especially interests me regarding the recent Supreme Court decisions is the common thread it represents among all branches of government over the past thirty years. And that common thread is an amazing lack of restraint when it comes to respecting what your branch of government entails compared to the others or what the role of the Federal gov't is to state gov'ts.
The Senate has basically taken over the nominating process for judges - Presidents now have to get on their knees and ask "who is acceptable to you?" rather than pick his own man. The Senate's power to block appointments was hardly ever used for one hundred and seventy years and now it's commonplace.
Presidents have more or less decided that war is their perogative, for which they may or may not ask Congress' permission despite that power being given, consitutionally, to the legislature.
The Supreme Court, having no one to answer to, simply rolls over precedent, consistency and rational thinking. The Court acts as a super-legislature when it wants to and make arbitrary rulings that constantly surprise for the very reason that they have no rational basis. Certainly the Constitution has ceased being much of a guide for them.
The Court has become purely outcome-based and law is arbitrary enough to allow that. Thus when the Supremes decided that the Florida Supreme Court rulings against Bush in 2000 were a joke (which they were, any eight-year old could tell you it wasn't fair to re-count just a couple counties), they recognized that Bush had won and then came up with some flimsy reasoning afterwards. The Court's motto could now be "the end justifies the means". Mark and Tom ought to be on the Supreme's case.
End of whine.
What especially interests me regarding the recent Supreme Court decisions is the common thread it represents among all branches of government over the past thirty years. And that common thread is an amazing lack of restraint when it comes to respecting what your branch of government entails compared to the others or what the role of the Federal gov't is to state gov'ts.
The Senate has basically taken over the nominating process for judges - Presidents now have to get on their knees and ask "who is acceptable to you?" rather than pick his own man. The Senate's power to block appointments was hardly ever used for one hundred and seventy years and now it's commonplace.
Presidents have more or less decided that war is their perogative, for which they may or may not ask Congress' permission despite that power being given, consitutionally, to the legislature.
The Supreme Court, having no one to answer to, simply rolls over precedent, consistency and rational thinking. The Court acts as a super-legislature when it wants to and make arbitrary rulings that constantly surprise for the very reason that they have no rational basis. Certainly the Constitution has ceased being much of a guide for them.
The Court has become purely outcome-based and law is arbitrary enough to allow that. Thus when the Supremes decided that the Florida Supreme Court rulings against Bush in 2000 were a joke (which they were, any eight-year old could tell you it wasn't fair to re-count just a couple counties), they recognized that Bush had won and then came up with some flimsy reasoning afterwards. The Court's motto could now be "the end justifies the means". Mark and Tom ought to be on the Supreme's case.
End of whine.
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