This & That

"One thing that all the seasons have in common is that in the midst of any one of them it's impossible to imagine things any other way."

    -- Richard Brookhiser in latest National Review.  

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So around 10pm-ish the other night I turned on the Reds game and saw Homer Bailey was pitching in the 9th inning. Odd to see him pitching that late but I figured they wanted to get him a shutout.  Didn't think that was too smart given you want him fresh for the playoffs but I suppose shutouts don't grow on trees. The games are meaningless now that the Reds have clinched so I half-watched and half-read my iPad. Then I heard a Reds announcer say, after a Pirate out, that that's the way all Pirate hitters have looked tonight. Which "caught my ear" since it seemed a sweeping statement.  Then a pitch or so later I hear him mention the Pirates haven't got any hits.  What?  Down goes the iPad and suddenly the game has my full attention. I turn up the sound and check the line score on a baseball app. NO hits!  Holy cow.  But then, ironically, instead of watching the game I grab my phone and text my brother and a friend, telling them to turn on the TV and watch the Reds. Bailey then completes the no-hitter with a pop-up to a wide-smiling Brandon Philips and the celebration ensues.  It's been 24 years since a Reds pitcher last pitched a no-hitter. 

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I feel a smidgeon less of the natural horror that contemplation of death brings. Perhaps that's easy to say when my own mortality doesn't seem imminent.  But recent deaths of a cousin and uncles make it seem a bit more of a familiar process. I try to look at death as less nightmare and more of transition, as if they (the dead) have simply left earlier on a trip that all of us will take.  

But there's no getting around the huge sense of loss that death brings to the living. And, as Chesterton wrote, death is a "monstrous transformation." Having grown accustomed to our bodies, and having identified them as "us" (body and soul being joined), the sudden turn of the body into mush and then dust is a traumatic thing to anticipate in ourselves or those we love. 

I feel slightly less prejudiced against death since some of my best friends are dead, or more precisely folks like Chesterton speak to me though dead via the words on a page.  It's ironic that Chesterton argued for a "democracy of the dead" -- to listen to those who have gone before us -- given that now he himself is one of the dead. 

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I sometimes think back to the seeming presumptuous when I lectured our religion teacher concerning sexual intercourse. I, having no experience whatsoever, told him after class that I thought it impolitic of him to suggest that one shouldn't get into heavy petting lest it lead to what no "red-blooded American male" can stop, and that is full intercourse. It seemed to me to give a way out to males who were in the position of being on the edge of orgasm.  Tell a man he can't hold it and he likely can't.  But perhaps my comment wasn't so dumb, inexperienced as it was, given what I read from Chesterton today, "Knowledge and innocence are both excellent things...But it is right that knowledge should be the servant and innocence the master....Dickens responded to a profound human sentiment (the sentiment that has made saints and the sanctity of children) when he made the gentler and less-travelled type - the type which moderates and controls."

Ultimately there seems to be no way to argue with a person who argues from experience. There's no comeback to "you haven't gone what I've gone through." I was fascinated by a Theresa Borchard video in which she admits to Catholic cafeteria-ism on the theory that her first priority is to stay alive. Hard to disagree.

A friend of mine was changed by his reading "Sacrilege" by Leon Podles, with its harsh view of the church and seminaries. After that he was done with organized religion. Nothing is abstract for him; there is no 'cerebral detachment'. He brought up the Sack of Constantinople like it occurred yesterday. I told him his beef was with Jesus since He left humans in charge. He didn't have to ascend to Heaven. (Although that's not to say Jesus is absent.)

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So, we employees take surveys indicating our general satisfaction with the job environment, and it's surreal how seriously they take these "engagement" surveys. Our boss lamented how back in the day these used to be timed during quarter-end, our busy time. He also lamented how someone can wake up in a foul mood and give bad scores. It sure doesn't seem like they think much of us if they think we can be influenced by something as trivial as waking up on the wrong side of the bed or a bad menstrual cycle. We can objectively provide input. I don't think my Gallup survey results would've changed one iota all year and I'm hardly a paragon of maturity.

Apparently there's a desire (five of 22 of us suggested it, which apparently makes for a groundswell) for more get-togethers like the bowling gig. Our boss was asking for other ideas and young Ben offered "3-D Dodge ball", basically dodge ball on trampolines. Youth, sweet youth. Nancy suggested a house of horrors (doesn't our place of business qualify?). Rose suggested a movie, which sounds more up my alley. Introvert that I am, I thought, "How about we all read silently to ourselves one afternoon?"

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Heather King: "People are the problem and people are the solution."

German Bishops Issue

Interesting to hear Lino Rulli and Fr. Rob on The Catholic Guy show skewer the German bishops for how they are handling Catholics who are trying to avoid a church tax in their country.

Jimmy Akin opines on the issue as well.

Quotable

Fr. Barron quoted a Bob Dylan lyric recently that was galvanizing and memorable. It went like, "what good is freedom bein' so near when the truth is so far away?"

Stray thoughts of seeming relevance:

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Wouldn't it be weird to go to a Hollywood party back during the silent film era and hear Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and such talking? Or wouldn't it be funny if they came to a party and just started moving their mouths without any sound coming out?

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A fond wish, as a child, was to travel to the end of a rainbow. Not for imaginary gold - i didn't believe that any more than i believed there was a man on the moon- but simply to substantiate and locate what seemed ephemeral and elusive. I've tried the same with God and had similar results.

I couldn't enjoy the rainbow simply as it was - I needed to travel to it, touch it, make it more tangible.

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I search the Internet for welcome confirmation that I'm not the only perverted individual who thinks amazon.com's logo looks like a long penis.

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If beer didn't already exitst, it would have to have been invented.

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I can't believe I've become one of THOSE people.

You know, the type that celebrate the announcement of gadget upgrade like it's a national holiday. The sort that follows press conferences from Apple or Amazon. It's unsettling given my proud heritage as not being prone to merchandising. Ultimately it's artificially stimulative. All the sensations of excitement but without the substance.

So I wait with great anticipation for the first reviews to get posted on amazon.com's website for the new Paperwhite despite the fact that it's basically the same as an other Kindle but for the light! Since the dawn of literacy we've managed to produce light of some sort. It wouldn't seem a big deal to simply sit next to a light source when reading the Kindle.

Admittedly the e-reader concept is cool: a papyrus-like look that holds thousands of books in an instrument the size of a small page. And it was definitely cool to get one. But there's a sense that the upgrades - be it for the iPhone 5 or the Kindle Paperwhite - have a huge diminishing utility compared to the earliest version. Maybe we want to get the new gadgets because we want to re-experience that "gee whiz" moment of wonder when we first carried a smartphone or an e-reader.

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Late to confession, I felt appreciative that the priest was so long-toiling. The hours for confession read: "12:15-until done. Yes "until done". Now that's priestly vocation in action. I thanked Fr. afterward for his availability. He said happily, "No problem. Gets me out of the office!" I was thankful also for the mercy of Christ. It seems too good to be true, that you can go into the confessional and come out as if if nothing had happened between you and God. It's a weird feeling: it's like if I did something bad to my wife and then asked forgiveness and then I just carried on like we we could go back to the way things were before I did something bad to her.

It's not like anything in my experience which is more or less predicated on "once burned, twice shy." We burn Christ and yet he doesn't seem the shyer for it. And so must we be. It should, theoretically, be easier for us to forgive others when we see how we are forgiven but Jesus told a parable that refuted that notion.

I remember a Protestant friend back in the late '80s named Jeff who said that the rap on Catholics was they sinned like crazy all week then went to confession, only to sin again. That potential for abuse was completely foreign to me at the time but now I see how it could be a problem. Of course the firm purpose of amendment is a critical issue. But really Confession is a sort of amazing thing (well, amazing Person) in that you can instantly become undefined by your sins. The definition of ourselves is what God sees. His view of us is the only one that counts. So it's no wonder that Catholics in the '50s, back when there were actually self-admitted "bad Catholics", had the confession lines were hummin'.

There's always the temptation to treat God as an ATM teller or a machine in some way simply because He is so consistent (unlike human beings). His love is unvarying, uncomplicated. The way I, a computer programmer, tell the difference between machines and humans is that humans are the ones who make errors. A machine never does. So naturally I am tempted to think of God, who never makes a mistake, as machine-like.

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The morning feels downright morningly. Neighborly. Civilized sixty degrees, first time in a week. Able to sit out on the front porch as the light INCREASES for once. The air is alive with the glory of God, graced with the scent of water from a recent rain. I'll so miss the outdoors this winter, even the "pseudo" out-of-doors of a suburban front porch and its ceiling overhang.

Citizens United Case & Money in Politics

The MSM is outraged over money in politics and I suspect part of that is because it erodes their role. They don't want candidates going around their vetting process, running ads instead of talking to them. Media types naturally want as much power as they can get, pretty much like everybody else.

There are those on the political right and left who make George Soros or the Koch brothers out to be bogeymen. I don't do that, but I do tend to sometimes arrogantly question the "premise of democracy", as explicated by Antonin Scalia. He told Brian Lamb in response to a question concerning fear of money in politics and consequent undue influence:

"If you believe that we ought to go back to monarchy. That the people are such sheep, that they just swallow whatever they see on television or read in the newspapers. No, the premise of democracy is that people are intelligent and can discern the true from the false, at least when, as the campaign laws require, you know who is speaking."

A P.S.A.

Murray Rothbard's View

Interesting post on Catholic political thought via a Jewish atheist: (found on American Catholic - I'm a sucker for these "Catholics are from Venus, Protestants from Mars" type views):

Traditionalist Catholics are typically not fans of Murray Rothbard. And yet as I read more of his work, I find more reasons to appreciate Rothbard’s insights into political theory, which I believe were shaped by a deeper appreciation for the Catholic political and philosophical tradition than some are willing to admit. It is easy to see Rothbard as nothing more than a secular Jewish atheist who opposed “the Old Order” and supported unrestricted personal liberty. And yet he spent his final years advocating for Pat Buchanan’s presidential run and his socially conservative platform.

That there is an affinity for Catholicism in Rothbard’s thought is not surprising. He identifies the Catholic countries, above all Austria, as the originators of subjective-utility economics, while Protestant countries such as Britain developed more labor-centric economic theories. The Catholic tradition had identified consumption (in moderation) as a worthwhile activity and goal; the Calvinist tradition emphasized hard labor as the primary good and consumption as a necessary evil at best. He writes:

Conversely, it is no accident that the Austrian School, the major challenge to the Smith-Ricardo vision, arose in a country that was not only solidly Catholic, but whose values and attitudes were still heavily influenced by Aristotelian and Thomist thought. The German precursors of the Austrian School flourished, not in Protestant and anti-Catholic Prussia, but in those German states that were either Catholic or were politically allied to Austria rather than Prussia.

Rothbard did not limit his religious comparisons to economic theory alone. In exploring the history of the United States, he identified two major religious-political tendencies of the 19th century: the evangelical “Yankee” pietism of Protestant New England, and the “liturgism” of Catholic immigrants and some high-church Protestants such as German Lutherans. The Yankee pietists were obsessed with using the power of the state to create God’s kingdom on Earth and aid the individual in his struggle for salvation. The “liturgists”, on the other hand, saw the local parish and the family as primarily responsible for moral life and salvation.

The liturgicals saw the road to salvation in joining the particular church, obeying its rituals, and making use of its sacraments; the individual was not alone with only his emotions and the state to protect him. There was no particular need, then, for the state to take on the functions of the church. Furthermore, the liturgicals had a much more relaxed and rational view of what sin really was; for instance,excessive drinking might be sinful, but liquor per se surely was not.

It seems safe to say that Rothbard, in his efforts to understand the intellectual roots of libertarian thought, found plenty to admire in the Catholic tradition

Cross

Read more of N.T. Wright's book on the gospels and the cross.  He says that the Jesus' disciples didn't realize immediately that the Cross was a victory not a defeat.  It looked like defeat after all, just as, I think, we can look on this post-Christian world as something of a defeat for Christ.  But He's already won.  Wright argues that God's plan for dealing with evil was to draw evil to a point, to localize it's massive "power" and then defeat it.  This He did by calling Abraham and the Jews - the scandal of particularity - leading up to the penultimate victory of evil, that of Jesus being arrested and tried.  St. Paul writes that the apogee of evil was not the crucifixion but the arrest.  The crucifixion Paul and N.T.Wright see as the defeat of evil, not its climax. My tendency is to think of the Resurrection as the defeat of Satan but that's merely something that followed the victory, the chance to begin anew now that evil had been defeated. 

Wright is by all appearances a pacifist, and certainly he's done more than anybody in recent memory to make me reconsider things. He was appalled by how Christians treated the death of bin Laden as something to be celebrated (which I agree with) and he rued the fact that the response to 9/11 was guns and bombs (which is much harder for me).

This & That

So the big event of last Thursday was the annual long bike ride. We've decided to permanently start from Spring Valley, Ohio, population 1250 (give or take 250) and travel south towards Oregonia, some 14 miles away.

On the way down I listened to an interview with biographer Robert Caro, who described the remarkably duplicitous LBJ. Johnson would, in the words of Robert F. Kennedy, lie "even when he didn't have to." After the sedentary car ride of an hour and ten minutes, I was ready to roll.

We started out on a surprisingly chipper and sunny day with a temp in the low-ish 70s. It wasn't long before that would change, but there's never a bad day for a bike ride unless it's too cold or too rainy and this would prove to be neither.

We went 12.5 miles and then turned around, planning to possibly do more mileage in Spring Valley but by the time we'd done 25 miles our fannies were sore.

We traveled by hill and dale, tree and farm. We traveled past picturesque houses sitting in resplendent isolation. We fed a shiny brown horse, getting her attention by waving plucked grass. We went on a bathroom tour: once at the ice cream shop in Spring Valley, once in Corwin seven miles later, another when back at Spring Valley. We soaked in the lush greenery, rode over plump acorns, and complained about the m.i.a. sun which appeared briefly only to flame out after about five minutes of riding. We appreciated the utter silence of deep country. We admired dams and diehards. We gazed longingly at white houses on forested hilltops and country porches that wrapped around. We fixed the sound coming from Mom's bike, a chain guard problem. We ate dinner in the same booth at the same place as last year.

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Trying to hurry through the stages of the Kübler-Ross list in order to get to a calm acceptance of another four years of Obama. (Of course I should already be through it since didn't we always have an impending sense of doom with the Republican field when first constituted?)

The Columbus Dispatch poll, which is usually impressively accurate, says Obama wins OH 51-47. There's certainly a symmetry to it: eight years of Bush for the Left and now eight years of Obama for the right to swallow. Bush arguably represented the worst of the Right's values (i.e. war fever) and Obama the worst of the Left (spend till you're broke, abort like crazy). So we've gotten the worst of both worlds, not to be unduly negative or anything. But the die was cast when Obama won his healthcare vote.

Sadly, Bill Clinton's biggest lie of all was "the era of big government is over." The Europeans were likely right all along when they scoffed at how America has a huge government though its people were in denial about it. It's just incredulous to me that Ohioans don't see, for example, the huge difference between former governor Ted Strickland and current governor John Kasich. It's just night and day. But Strickland has hopes of regenerating his political career. He may be delusional or he may be reading correctly how poorly informed the republic is.

I just wish Romney or somebody find words persuasive enough to change the minds of some of the Obama leaners. Find some way to reach them. But then one can't, overnight, undo a lacking educational system, one that leans left and is light on economics and ethics.

There's definitely a sense that we're living off the Christian capital and it's getting spent down rapidly and the only (selfish) question is: "Will I get off this earth before things turn to hell?" As the Catholic cardinal of Chicago, Cardinal George famously said: "I expect to die in bed, my successor to die in prison and his successor die as a martyr in the public square."


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Read about artist Marc Chagall over the weekend, including this said about him by critic Maurice Raynal: "Chagall interrogates life in the light of a refined, anxious, childlike sensibility, a slightly romantic temperament...a blend of sadness and gaiety characteristic of a grave view of life. His imagination, his temperament, no doubt forbid a Latin severity of composition."

Chagall writes poetically of his travels:

"There, in the south [of France], for the first time in my life, I saw that the rich greenness - the like of which I had never seen in my own country. In Holland I thought I discovered that familiar and throbbing light, light the light between the late afternoon and dusk. In Italy I found that peace of the museums which the sunlight brought to life. In Spain I was happy to find the inspiration of a mystical, if sometimes cruel, past, to find the song of its sky and of its people. And in Palestine I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very being."

In the Holy Land he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters." I feel simpatico with that seeing how I grow more fascinated with the OT, especially in and after the time of the Babylonian exile.

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This week was also affected by increasingly odd behavior from our dog Buddy. I headed downstairs after a shower one morning and shockingly found him atop the kitchen table standing taller than me. I helped him down but it bespeaks a sort of quiet desperation that he would go to such lengths seeking something as unpromising as paper. He eats church bulletins, advertisements and occasionally books. The day before yesterday I found he'd demolished Dean Koontz's memoir about his golden retriever titled "A Big Little Life". Likely jealous. Buddy'd eaten through the first ten or twenty pages. He also found an unopened tube of toothpaste and managed to eat some of that. Fortunately it wasn't the kind that has an ingredient dangerous to dogs. I tend to think it's boredom but that may be me projecting. I'd be bored if all I did was sleep all day and have only two small meals to look forward to. He's got the cat, but has no use for him.

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To what shall I compare a fall day? In Cloudumbus I compare it to grimness crossed with exhilaration, a leaden sky crossed with a crisp cool wind. God says we're fresh out of the high holidays of summer, out of those mellow days graced with tropical temps and meadow'd expanse. We say goodbye to a sense of entitlement, the sense that we should be able to enter and leave our house or workplace without adding additional clothing. We say goodbye to the ribaldly lighted days on the patio, to the tomato plants growing like weeds. Now, from now on, all is gift. We head into the head wind of history.

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A fascinating thing about Christ is how despite knowing human psychology better than anyone, he still represented himself as paradoxical. At times he is harsh and other times gentle. At times admonishing the sinner, other times saying, as he does in a recent gospel that God desires mercy, not sacrifice, despite the parable of the ten virgins and how five ran out of oil and were told at the door, "sorry, bad luck, the door is closed and you should've saved your oil."

The knee-jerk human reaction to hearing conflicting data is to listen to only what you WANT to hear. Thus many Republicans I know spout only polls showing Romney in the lead in the presidential race while with Dems they spout only polls showing Obama in the lead. Our human tendency is to gravitate towards that which makes us feel better. So it's interesting that Jesus knew that tendency and yet still offer a mixed message.

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Nothing could be finer than to be in my recliner in the morning! (Or at dusk. Or anytime.) Yes giddy up and read your partner round & round!  It's time for the rich, invigoratin' prose of "The Bartender's Tale" or any and all of my books.  They feel like money to me and if the rich person's dream is to float in bed of money with fifties falling from the sky I feel similarly towards books, greedy for words, wanting to drown in a sea of them, to drink them in, to toss them in the air and let them fall on me.

Interview with Novelist Zadie Smith

Found here:

Q: Technology in the novel can act as a portal to fantasy, in Natalie/Keisha’s case, but can also prompt a ‘level of self-awareness literally unknown in the history of human existence’, to borrow a phrase from the book. Does being at such a historical moment signal a potential sea change in human behaviour and what kind of challenge does that pose to a novelist?

A: What it does to the novelist is only of concern to novelists; more interesting is what it does to people. Only two hundred years ago it was physically impossible to see yourself doing something you had done yesterday, that is, to see it in three dimensions, speaking and moving. It’s a miracle! It’s really unprecedented. The ancient myths thought that if we stared at ourselves in this way too long we’d fall in the water and drown. The myth preceded the technological reality (as seems to happen), but now we’re really here, relating to ourselves as objects.

Q: Becoming middle class is both something to aspire to and a poisoned chalice in the novel. For Felix his time working for a film company appears to offer a glimpse of salvation, until he is pulled down by drugs, whilst Leah and Natalie both aim to rise to the middle class by becoming lawyers and in due course feel a sense of betraying their roots. Is there something particularly English about this anxiety over entering a different strata of society?

A: Perhaps, I don’t know. It’s hard certainly to think of a middle class more afflicted by self-contempt. The phrase, in England, is a form of insult. In France, too. But that’s not true in America. I suppose we suspect the bourgeoise of a lack of vitality, and that’s always to be feared, at least a little.

Q: Women are often the timekeepers of this novel. The arc of Leah and Keisha’s lifelong friendship is traced in numbered vignettes, each with their own internal relativities. The fates of many of your people, from Shar, to Felix and his shut-in father Lloyd, are sealed in part by the removal of womanly affections and attentions. Is stretching and contracting time the only power women in the novel possess in their bid to change their circumstances?

A: Well, I think it’s an enormous power and advantage women have, this understanding of time and mortality. It’s only a shame that we often do everything we can to abandon or deny this natural advantage. I always think of the menopause: what a gift it is to women to have, in their own bodies, this piece of time-keeping which allows them to fully understand, in their bodies, that death is coming. Men don’t have that – you see so many men heading towards their deaths in utter shock and incomprehension because right until the final moments they thought they were going to be given some kind of reprieve. Or all those powerful men who make terrible fools of themselves in old age with girls a quarter of their age . . . They’re not very good managers of time, men. So it’s an odd thing that in my generation this female advantage has been so submerged. The menopause never spoken of among young women, hidden like a curse. Everybody trying to look and be twenty-eight forever . . . In Leah and Natalie’s case they both seem to reject a healthy relationship with time. Leah by staying still and Natalie by refusing to understand that it is finite. But I’m not a pessimist about those two: the novel doesn’t end with the end of their lives and they have in front of them the same possibilities for change that we all have all the time.

Excerpt....

Excerpt from  The Best American Poetry of 2012: 

To write poetry, to read it, to go to poetry readings, is a way of being in the world, and there will always be those who get suspicious and feel that maybe Plato was right to exclude the poets from his ideal Republic. Poetry, as they see it, is a form of “divine madness” that can lead you astray like a drug. It may be that all criticism has its origin in this rationalist rejection of the poet’s way of being in the world. Faced with uncomprehending or dismissive criticism, the young poet might take heart from something T. S. Eliot once wrote: “Upon giving the matter a little attention, we perceive that criticism, far from being a simple and orderly field of beneficent activity, from which impostors can be readily ejected, is no better than a Sunday park of contending and contentious orators, who have not even arrived at the articulation of their differences.” To counter the din of contentious oratory, very little of which will help the writer (or reader) in any useful way, I turn instinctively to the rhetorical question that animates Shakespeare’s sonnet sixty-five: “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?”

Political Thoughts

If Obama could survive his "clinging to guns and religion" comment, seems Romney could survive his 47% comment.

Obama insulted all gun owners and believers in religion, which is certainly more than 47% of the country. 

For all the angst over the loss of presidential elections to Clinton and Obama, at least the Republicans are nominating reasonably competitive candidates.  I know close only counts in horseshoes, but Bill Clinton famously never got to 50% and although Obama won handily in '08 it wasn't a romp. I believe he only got 53% of the vote.

Tom of Disputations, by the way, once said something along the lines that it's hard to expect much of a Church that baptizes infants. Similarly it's hard to expect much of an electorate with a similar low barrier to entry.

They say that McCain would've won if he'd had Reagan's demographics, which suggests the real problem may be not attracting minorities and Hispanics in great enough numbers. But sometimes you just can't - witness Boston after the influx of Irish and New York after the age of the Knickerbockers. I don't think there was anything a Boston non-Democrat in 1880 could've done to attract Irish votes. 

From Another Post

And via Brandon Field's blog:

St. John's con­stant theme was God's inex­haustible mercy. He often coaxed sin­ners to repent, as he does here:

"Sup­pose that a believ­er who once was pleas­ing to God becomes full of wicked­ness and com­mits griev­ous sins that exclude him from the king­dom. I will not allow even a per­son like that to despair, although he may have grown old prac­tic­ing his unspeak­able wicked­ness.

"Now if the wrath of God were a pas­sion, a per­son might well despair of quench­ing the flame that his many sins kin­dled. How­ev­er, because the divine nature is pas­sion­less, God never pun­ish­es nor takes vengeance with wrath, but with ten­der care and much lov­ingkind­ness. So we must be of much good courage and trust in the power of repen­tance.

God does not pun­ish for his own sake even those who have sinned against him, for noth­ing can harm that divine nature. Rather, to our advan­tage he acts to pre­vent our per­verse­ness from wors­en­ing by our habit­u­al­ly neglect­ing him. Even a per­son who places him­self out­side the light inflicts no loss on the light. But shut up in dark­ness, he suf­fers the great­est loss him­self. Sim­i­lar­ly, he who habit­u­al­ly despis­es that almighty power, does no injury to the power, but inflicts the great­est pos­si­ble injury on him­self. And for this rea­son God threat­ens us with pun­ish­ments—and often inflicts them—not as aveng­ing him­self, but by way of draw­ing us to him­self."

Good Comment on Steve Gershom's Blog

"Victim souls aren't victim souls for the sake of being so - if they are really victim souls, it is because they have a very particular relationship with the Lord who has asked them to share in his cup of suffering. (Just like some people seem to get a special dose of His joy.) I completely agree that the amount of suffering one has is not a good gauge for holiness or life in general at all. That is like a reverse prosperity gospel...

the OT Jews had to work through all of this over centuries of prayer and grumbling and suffering and victory and defeat. And the only consistent answer they got was, "I will be with you." Jesus came. He is still here. Sometimes it's a wedding feast, and sometimes it's a death bed. Often all at the same time."

You Never Forget Your First (Or Even Third) Free Book

Ten and a half years of blogging has not gone unrewarded - I was just offered my third free book. I snagged a review copy of "Vatican II: The Essential Texts" though the book feels slightly tainted by the introduction by infamous Catholic liberal James Carrol, but that is mitigated by another intro from Pope Benedict (hopefully there's no conflation going on there). Anyway it 's good to have the documents of Vatican II in this handsomely designed book.