The Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.

Hate Mail

2012-01-19T11:58:00.002-06:00

I read blogs sometimes and the authors complain about getting hate mail... I only wish I got hate mail. I once got a mild disdain mail. It tickled me.

Slow news day today.

2012-01-09T12:14:00.000-06:00

So I'm not gonna post much

It's the Twelfth Day of Christmas

2012-01-05T13:04:00.002-06:00

And what did my true love give to me?

^%&#-all!

(Aww! Jes' kiddin', true love.)

List of Weight Classes in Boxing

2012-01-04T16:02:00.001-06:00

Bantamweight
Cruiserweight
Featherweight
Flyweight
Heavyweight
Junior bantamweight
Junior featherweight
Junior flyweight
Junior heavyweight
Junior lightweight
Junior middleweight
Junior welterweight
Light Bantamweight
Light flyweight
Light heavyweight
Light Middleweight
Light welterweight
Lightweight
Middleweight
Mini flyweight
Minimumweight
Pinweight
Strawweight
Super bantamweight
Super featherweight
Super flyweight
Super heavyweight
Super lightweight
Super middleweight
Super welterweight
Welterweight

Never say die.

2012-01-03T21:28:00.000-06:00

Oops. I hate it when that happens.

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T12:31:00.001-06:00

I broke one last month, never to make a New Year's resolution again, and another one yesterday, to blog every day in January.

The Contrarian List of Do-s and Don't-s

2011-10-03T11:31:00.004-05:00

Do:

mess with Texas;
have a cow, man;
talk to strangers;
quit your day job.

Don't;

bedoobedoo;
your homework;
wop;
right by me.

Snakes and Ladders

2011-03-15T10:23:00.001-05:00

Ironic third verse of Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven

2011-03-10T15:02:00.006-06:00

I got the rockin' pneumonia,
I need a shot of rhythm and blues.
I caught the rollin' arthiritis
Sittin' down at a rhythm review.
Roll Over Beethoven they're rockin' in two by two.

The irony of course is that when Berry was finally diagnosed with stage 3 country-and-western cancer it was already too late; the progressive-jazz chemotherapy gave him at most an extra month. Some say it was the shame that really did him in.

Gotta go; starting to feel a severe bossa-nova migraine coming on.

Second day of Lent.

2011-03-10T14:48:00.003-06:00

Remarkable, the flagging of resolution being even noticeable, let alone so pronounced.

I really must start writing them down

2011-02-03T14:09:00.004-06:00

... short conversations with perfect strangers, I've been having more of since the cancer took ms away. Few have been as wonderful as this one with a thin serious woman in her late forties or so.

ME: {noticing Perfect Stranger noticing me spinning around a load bearing pillar by the 7th floor elevator while hanging onto it as if for dear life} Have you ever had to grab onto something to prevent yourself from just floating away?
PS {very seriously}: Yes.
ME: I hate that!
PS {a little sadly}: I know.

b

2011-02-03T14:05:00.002-06:00

Angels advised me to meditate two people lying in the snow gazing up at the stars, their beating wings grazing one another's once, momentarily.

Chaperons

2011-01-30T15:14:00.003-06:00

The notion of the oblivious chaperon occurs to me. It seems an ideal arrangement, the duties of that functionary being carried by the expedient of her presence only and not by the scandalous knowledge, real or imagined, of the sins of her charge.

Fantastic

2011-01-28T10:40:00.003-06:00

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accidental destruction of the space shuttle Challenger a minute or so into its flight. I remember that day. It was fantastic.

Walking in the Snow

2011-01-28T10:24:00.005-06:00

Had a half hour to kill after a swim and delivering some posters to HCP where I just missed Mass. So I walked in the snow, so quiet, muffled traffic sounds all about like a small sad Christmas party two doors down just winding to a close. Thoughts filled with LAFS and things she said.

Doh! What is becoming of this--some kind of Dear Diary affair?!!

No, but I don't want you to forget the walk so warm, and the deepening crystalline snow flakes sharp enough to know to be gentle, and a strange hyphen in a wonderful name.

Fantastic

2011-01-27T10:24:00.005-06:00

My favorite use of the word fantastic, meaning of the stuff of fantasy, the word fantasy meaning hallucination is Charlie Brown's in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Used without irony, it is more akin to horrific than to wonderful or grand. I try always to use the word in that negative fashion, when I use it.

Sometime, though, it's impossible.

Fantastic!

{sigh!} fantastic.

Comes to mind.

2011-01-24T14:26:00.005-06:00

I saw someone outside kissing your mother
in the snow;
He's been gone for such a time, and she's still young,
you know.
Her colour was blush and I asked if she was cold.

She said no.
/

Taxi!

2011-01-18T13:07:00.008-06:00

I like how the word taxi refers actually not to the automobile itself but the meter inside--the taximeter, which calculates and displays the fare based on some arcane calculation of distance and time and rates--and barometric pressure, I suspect. The car is a taxicab, cab recalling the hansom cabs of Sherlock Holmes' London--which, I presume, did not have meters--and having its etymology rooted in the cabriolet style of horse-drawn vehicle.

So, when I've had a few too many, I will call on my host to summon me a taximeter-equipped cabriolet. That is to say I haven't, but I will.

*

Third-hand Smoke Poses Risk, Say Physicians

2011-01-14T17:24:00.004-06:00

"Third-hand" smoke — which lingers in cars, on furniture and on smokers themselves after a cigarette is extinguished — leaves toxic chemicals that crawling children can ingest, say pediatricians.

Expect more warnings as scientists in two separate studies are currently exploring the effects of reading emails sent by smokers and sharing linen with anyone who has ever visited Virginia.
\
\

Big news in Canada

2011-01-14T10:44:00.007-06:00

The Dire Straights song Money for Nothing has been banned from play on Canadian private radio by its own private watchdog. The use of the word "faggot" several times in the second verse had offended a single listener in Newfoundland. Personally, I think as an homage to Kanye West they should allow it to be played with the word "nigger" edited in. They can recycle the ones still lying on the floor from the Huckleberry Finn audio books.

Bad Poetry

2011-01-11T13:26:00.004-06:00

This is a bad poem I wrote a while ago when I thought there was not a chance I would outlive ms.

Hereafter

Hush, old woman;

You gave me your body,

Your lashes when curly;

Your cheek when smooth,

Hush, old woman,

It is no longer early.

Hush, Hush, old woman;

You gave me your troth,

When I lied, when I lay

In the depth of my sin;

Hush, old woman,

On wake’s wedding day.

Hush now, woman;

You gave me my babies,

Tendered in pain;

Bawling, squalling, noisome brats;

Hush, but woman,

All anon gone again.

Hush old woman;

You gave me your youth,

Wasted wakefulness,

Breath, time; My wickedness;

Hush, old woman,

It is done, long-tooth.

Hush, old woman;

You gave me your tear,

Fear, and pure ivor’ prayer;

I lay in a ghost of your pain;

Hush! Hush woman,

Not now long, He deign.

Hush, Hush! Hush, old woman;

You give me a black dress,

White face to the sky;

Fain whisper your incense

To Purgatory;

It is over; And may be for ill,

But accomplished: lowly test;

Now hush, old woman,

And go to your rest.

Good for some LAFS

2011-01-04T10:59:00.007-06:00

I believe in love at first sight. I believe it's something real. When we are young and foolish we believe it to be the same as love, and when we are young and cynical we dismiss it as lust, but when we reach a certain age we understand it's neither. It has more in common with love because it entails an orientation to love and with it a desire, however rash or reckless, to carry out that love. It has nothing in common with lust except that they accompany one another often enough to make the confusion forgivable among the pitiably jaded.

When you've a foolish heart.

2010-12-22T14:09:00.002-06:00

When you've a foolish heart,
I think it can be taught to be constant;
but not the other way around.

Hi brow humor

2010-11-22T17:32:00.005-06:00

Anyone looking for to split a gut need look no further than the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia page for The Three Stooges. An excerpt of the first and the entire second paragraph:

Curly Howard replaced brother Shemp, who later returned when Curly suffered a debilitating stroke in May 1946. After Shemp's death from a heart attack in November 1955, he was replaced by comedian Joe Besser, after the use of film actor Joe Palma to film four Shemp-era shorts. Ultimately, Joe DeRita (nicknamed "Curly Joe") replaced Joe Besser by 1958. The act regained momentum throughout the 1960s as popular kiddie fare until Larry's paralyzing stroke in January 1970 effectively marked the end of the act proper. Moe tried unsuccessfully one final time to revive the Stooges with longtime supporting actor Emil Sitka filling in for Larry. Larry ultimately succumbed to a series of additional strokes in January 1975, followed by Moe, who died of lung cancer in May 1975.

When I got to "lung cancer" I 'spit take'd coffee all over my screen.

My Atheist Friend sent me this NYT op-ed.

2010-09-22T14:09:00.004-05:00

(http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters/)

I'm a yutz.

This guy has everything: a soft job, a PhD from Cambridge, a lovely home in the Garden State* and the chance to write op-eds for the gray lady... who lives ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES AWAY... IN TRAFFIC!!!** And he's a mental midget--dumber than a cretin. Whereas I am a computer programmer in Winnipeg (which is an hour and a half away from more wilderness in all directions) who lives in a wretched hovel and writes angry letters to the Winnipeg Free Press. And a yutz, did I mention?

Dr. McMahan starts out with a perfectly valid challenge to believers: the problem of suffering innocents.*** He must have read it somewhere; I'm sure he's incapable of thinking it up for himself. Then he applies it to dumb animals as if no one had ever thought of that before. After that, everything he says--beginning with his very next point, "Gotcha!" (I'm paraphrasing)--is not just wrong, but stupid; a base appeal to our emotions masquerading as argument.

The first error he makes is to equate pain with suffering which is invalid even if we confine our study to human beings. The vast majority of people would not equate their own greatest suffering with their own greatest physical pain. Further, when we are in pain it is worthwhile to examine how much of the suffering that does come with it is psychological. The equation of pain and suffering is even less valid when applied to animals. I do not say animals don't suffer, but their suffering is analogous in some uncertain way--not equivalent--to humans'. And while the suffering of animals is not quite an imponderable mystery, we can agree chickens simply do not spend their time in feeding cages yearning to be free to scratch for worms.

I won't go through paragraph by paragraph to dismantle his non sequiturs one by one. His continual and everywhere anthropomorphizing both of animals and of God ("any self-respecting deity" {groan} WHAT. AN. IDIOT!) is enough to cast grave doubt on (if not completely invalidate) his conclusions. However, one particular argument shines brilliantly out in its fatuousness, his defense to the charge of playing God. Forget for a moment it's a straw man in the first place. Can it be that each of the two prongs of his argument is more idiotic than the other? No, I suppose the first one--that believers don't distinguish to his satisfaction between administering patients poison and administering them analgesia--is a simple (self-respecting) tu quoque.

Incredulous: How in the world did you get a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge?!
Jeff: It was easy: luckily in those days you could skip the logic stream entirely.

The second head of his argument is completely impenetrable. From the bare unsupported assertion that there is no God (Wow! Who knew?), he draws the conclusion that therefore it's okay for him to play god. No, if there is no God wouldn't that make it many times more dangerous to play god? After all, God doesn't have your back then. I guess we're supposed to take comfort in his other bare unsupported assertion that he would have made a better god than God. I can only gape.

But then, I'm just a yutz.

* State motto: Our mobsters make great fertilizer!
** Hat tip: Google Map
*** One day I would like to write more about this problem--or at least about how to plumb its depths.

Letter to My Other Protestant Friend (MOPF) and My Trad Friend (MTF) on the suggestion that Christ's miracles were primarily to prove his Divinity

2010-09-15T14:48:00.005-05:00

I don't know very much about this--to me, Christ's miracles remain a deep mystery-- but it seems to me "to prove His Divinity" must be among the least of reasons for Jesus' signs/healings. If it is a reason at all, it is certainly less important than the simple demonstrations of kindness {MTF} suggests, and I would even put it beneath His attending to the needs of the needy, though it is significant that He never did--or suggested a way to do--away entirely with the needy by, say, raising their consciousnesses under the tutelage of a priesthood of community organizers. To whom is He supposed to have proved His Divinity anyway? Not His contemporaries; they didn't believe it. Even among those closest to Him (excepting, of course, His mother), we wait until after His resurrection to hear Thomas pronounce Him "My Lord and my God". Not the people coming after him. First: no one hearing the apostolic teaching or later reading the bible will learn of our Lord's baptism, transfiguration and resurrection and believe that they happened as related and yet not also believe that His miracles happened as such. Second, given that, no one believing all these things will take the miracles as proof of His divinity unless they first take the baptism, transfiguration and resurrection as such. So the miracles are either ineffective or unnecessary as proofs of His Divinity.

I would agree that the miracles offered His contemporaries (and Jews of several succeeding generations perhaps) demonstrations of the messianic nature of His ministry at a time when the Messiah and the Godhead were never remotely dreamt to be found in one and the same person. The manifestation of messianic credentials by signs would not only have been in the sense that {MTF} suggests they prove His Divinity (he can do miracles, therefore he must be the Messiah and/or God), but also and more importantly would come to have been seen as fulfillment of prophecy surrounding the Messiah (cf Matthew 8:17 referring, if perhaps obliquely, to Isaias 53:4). But even this would only be noted by men already disposed to welcome the Messiah. So very much like us, the Pharisees and Sadducees comfortable in their offices might theoretically hope for the Messiah to bring salvation, but perhaps not just yet.

Contemplation of the miracles is complicated by some queer circumstances surrounding them. Several things strike me immediately: in no particular order, the fact that He was often reluctant to display His talent for miracles--the conversation at John 2:3-5, a case in point, so short yet with such power to lend understanding and vexation seemingly in equal parts; the fact that so much of the time He admonished people not to spread news of the miracles but to keep them secret accompanied by the fact that He was so often disobeyed in these instructions (Luke 5:14, Mark 7:3). These first two points in the paradoxical way of all deep truths seem at once to illustrate and refute the possible purpose of the miracles being base public relations. It seems beneath our Lord and Savior to trouble himself with PR, yet there is no doubt that it is intrinsic to His mission that He hear first cries of, "Hosanna," and then shouts of, "Crucify Him." The kind of notoriety that makes both Palm Sunday and Good Friday possible surely stems at least in part from unauthorized reports of His private miracles being ratified by His more public displays of power.

Then there is the fact that so often the healings involved children as part of His particular concern with children (e.g. Matthew 15:28, John 4:50). Though rife with meaning, among the important realizations we take from it is the knowledge that Christ is building not simply a spiritual framework upon which individuals can base their one-on-one relationship with God, but a physical and communal Church in which such a relationship as a parent's to his child matters in itself as well as signifying something greater. Fourthly we have the widespread belief at the time (being disinterred by some strange Protestant sects today) that misfortunes and physical infirmities were indications of Divine disfavor (John 9:1,2). This one Christ turns on its head making the sensible sign of physical healing the assurance of spiritual health. A fifth point, the fact that the apostles also performed miracles must be borne in mind (Acts 3:6, 5:12) when considering their import. It would seem definitively to refute the notion that Jesus' miracles necessarily prove His Divinity.

What then are the principle purposes of the miracles of Christ? There may be many, but what strikes me chiefly in considering the word sign so often used in Scripture for miracle is that it is the identical word Catholics use when describing the notion of Sacrament: to wit an efficacious sign of the grace of Christ. I propose that the principle function of our Lord's miracles is to be as types of the Sacraments themselves. I should rather say this is the function of our accounts of the miracles, for, after all, what does it matter that a particular man was cured of leprosy or blindness when so many others are not? The Sacraments in turn, viewed expansively, are mysteries (the Greeks actually say Mysterion for Sacrament) and gifts that adumbrate the principal mystery and gift of our faith--that of the Incarnation. In a circle then, the Second Person of the Trinity takes on flesh (i.e. matter) in time and space and uses space, time and matter in turn to illustrate both the salvific power of the Incarnation and how that power is to be carried forward to the end of time in the Sacraments, particularly that mystery most like the Incarnation itself, the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic symbolism in the miracles {MAF} mentions is obvious. Even so, we do well to meditate on how the signs of bread and wine reach not only forward to the present day Mass but back through Mosaic manna to Abraham's encounter with Melchizedek at the very birth of our Faith, highlighting the essential Sacramental/Incarnational nature of a Church instituted by Christ from outside time for all time. Christ's promise in Matthew 28:20 thus is very real and He keeps it in a very complete (that is to say both physical and spiritual) way.

We could consider each miracle in the Gospel for its sacramental hints and messages, but perhaps just a few will suffice. Recall the blind men Christ heals with spittle and in particular the one at John 9. Why does He use spittle? To prove His Divinity, better to heal with just a word or just a thought--no, the reference to Baptism is inescapable. Then, the words which follow, "Go now and wash in the pool called 'Sent'," of which the closing words "Ite missa est" are so reminiscent, require of us not only the passive acceptance of Sacramental graces, but our continuing cooperation in them. Finally, I find particularly glorious the notion of His mixing spittle with dirt to confect a plaster of mud. Once again Christ reaches back, even farther this time to the very creation of Adam from the same mud, to demonstrate that His is a physical-spiritual relationship with us from creation for all time.

Consider also the healing of the paralytic at Luke 5:18-26 this time as a type of the Sacrament of Penance. At the heart of the passage is Jesus' forgiveness of the man's sins, the physical healing--prefiguring the natural psychological healing which so often accompanies the Sacrament today--merely the sensible sign of that more profound cleansing, and Jesus delivers a short but profound catechesis to this effect at v.23. It is significant that it is not on account of the man's own faith that he is healed, but on account of the faith of those who brought him. The Catholic implications of this are many. It speaks once again to the communal nature of the Church and in particular the validity of petitioning the intercession of Saints, but the point I want to draw from it is just how little Christ expects from us before allowing us to turn back to Him. The fact that the man himself had not enough faith to effect his own healing signals the fact that we do not have enough contrition to effect the forgiveness of our own sins. Yet imperfect (and sometimes very imperfect) contrition suffices, and forgiveness is always forthcoming. The Source of Grace is always one however many conduits it may have.

Again, we could run on about the implications for the Sacramental priesthood (Holy Orders) in the draft of fishes, or the symbols of infant Baptism in the cases of miraculous healing of children, but this is perhaps enough to go on with.

New Letter to My Atheist Friend (MAF) et al.

2010-08-27T13:14:00.003-05:00

Though my own thoughts on the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) may be hopelessly confused, it is abundantly clear that Katha Pollitt's take is at least as simple-minded as any of her opponents'. The problem for Christians and for those of us who still take our ethical cues from the remnant of a Christian culture is not just the First Amendment, but predominantly the golden rule. Before any recourse to constitutional law it made, we firmly and devoutly wish to treat the Mahometan and his accouterments as we would have him treat us and our stuff--not merely as he may in fact treat us. Thus those of us who point to Christians’ plight in Arabia as an example to reciprocate are to me a source of shame (not that their direction of our notice to the "muslim" in his own element is entirely gratuitous, as we shall see). To a large degree, Christian, Jewish and secular Americans have been commendable--especially since "9/11"--in their fidelity, however grudging, to this aim. However, times are when it would seem that the barrier laid across our path is a suspicion not easily dismissed that we are being asked to treat their tiger (or if it be only a polecat the question is the same) as we would have them treat our good mouser.

We may note that if the analogy only really applies at a mundane level--that of politics--we still are called to be sly as serpents, not to hold politics beneath us. I'd be the last to argue that the problem of our treatment of Allah's children is not complicated immeasurably by its consideration on a spiritual plane. For example, how do we take into account the observation that Christianity blossoms under persecution and wilts almost as soon as it is able to poke its head above the fray? Luckily that needn't concern us here as long as due care is paid to avoiding sinful action and motive.

Certainly we have these things. First, the peace among religions in America has had a long development: the mythic torture and execution of a Fountainhead, catacombs and early fathers, a long period of medieval philosophy, inquisitions and pogroms, Reformation and Counter Reformation, thirty years' war (thirty?) and Enlightenment (for good and ill) all shaping the eventual Westphalian detente which was the social and political nesting place of the Bill of Rights and whose benefits we had enjoyed until comparatively recent times' crises of education and belief allowed secularism to claim for itself a default position. While this novel secularism, maintaining a synoptic if not myopic view of religions, is able to treat with Christianity and Islam as though they were different colors of the same bird, the fact that the evolution of the religion of mosque and minaret is layered with little variation on its inception as a triumphalist revelation to a prophet finding immediate ratification in supranormal success at arms holds open the question whether the even handed ornithologist is not in fact considering pigeon and merlin as one.

This open metaphor is fleshed out in perfectly reasonable hesitations over such questions as: the extent to which the mass of Islamic believers embraces the notion of the division of the world into two houses Islam and war (Harb); what is the preponderant interpretation of jihad (there can be no question of not embracing the Koranic concept jihad--the only possible wiggle room is in its real world application and I personally have heard intelligent Mahometans argue each side) and to what extent is the current condition of, for example, the Coptic or Chaldean Christian at home its end in America; and finally indeed to what extent in the minds of not only American “muslims”, but also GZM backers (moral and financial) worldwide, its construction is a consummation of the events of September 11, 2001--just as, arguably, the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the site of the last temple signified the triumphal conclusion to the conquest of Jerusalem.

We might heartily endorse {MAF}'s obeisance to religions’ freedoms with its proviso that they cannot effectively act against other religions and still maintain a healthy agnosticism concerning where the limit of being meets that of acting or whether indeed they may overlap--nay, whether in some philosophies they be synonymous. Can the First Amendment be held to protect a religion to the extent that its essence is act--and that act of war? Building a "cultural center" certainly is action not ontology, and whether it is an act against someone is another open question. The pain felt by Sep 11 victims' loved ones if not decisive cannot at least be dismissed outright.

I think those who unreservedly endorse the GZM should stop to consider a hypothetical case in which Christian internecine frictions approach in intensity those between Christians and Mahometans not just in the U.S. but throughout the world. Suppose for instance a poor Black Protestant church (and under-insured) in the South is successfully targeted by Klan arsonists. What is the proper Christian attitude for members of the congregation of that church to take, when they discover that a comfortable White Protestant congregation whose members probably include a few Klan sympathizers (though less likely Klansmen and probably not arsonists) has legally purchased the land and is planning a larger more opulent White church on site? What should right-thinking city planning and zoning officials do?

Affidata al Cuore Immacolato di Maria

2010-08-27T12:21:00.007-05:00

Yesterday they installed I discovered they had installed the stone at her head sometime in the last three days. It's beautiful and I kissed the letters in her name.

I'm not sure it's where they said they'd put it though. I thought it was going to be just half on her spot and half on the spot next to it which I've two thirds paid for. It looks better where it is. Maybe we can wait to move it until I'm underneath.

August 11, 1962 - April 1, 2010

2010-08-11T07:42:00.003-05:00

Today was her birthday.

Date begins

2010-08-11T06:41:00.003-05:00

Pro'lly a mistake to try to walk for nearly an hour in this humidity to make 7 AM mass at the Shrine of Bl.FX Seelos (yes, he's German, but seemly). They asked me if I swam, but I know they were joking because I didn't smell as bad as the River (not quite as bad). Weekday early morning mass isn't at the Shrine, though, it's around the corner and six blocks up ________ St. in the little wooden chapel associated with the shrine. The small rectangular white wooden building seems like a small country Protestant church, complete with an organ lofts so tiny there wouldn't be room for much more than Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to sit with their legs dangling over between the rails. The Mass was Catholic but with a Protestant Evangelical sort of atmosphere. The way people came up with their own Prayers of the Faithful reminded me of giving "Testimony"--I did too, though,;I asked for prayers for the repose of ms' soul. Fr X (I know his name, but I'll leave him anonymous here) toured the whole church--maybe thirty people--at, what's it called, hand shaking time? People were good though and greeted with kind words and condolences afterward. And I can't say there were any liturgical abuses, although I prefer my sacred vessels purified on site rather than taken off stage right by the server and returning after a minute or two of loud pressure washing sounds. I joke, but when I think of all the churches around the world in which the Blood of Our Lord is not worshiped down to the smallest trace it disheartens me. In aggregate, the tiny drops spilt must be an ocean for each tiny drop spilt on Calvary.

Day 7 ends up all well.

2010-08-08T16:30:00.004-05:00

Ah, THIS is why I came: Gumbo at Coop's and Miss Sophie Lee at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street.

Day 7 in NOLA continued.

2010-08-08T07:24:00.008-05:00

Once or twice I've mentioned the smells I'd noticed coming in the car window in this or that location, or in such and such county. Drive with the windows down in hot summer in Louisiana; a new aroma meets your harried senses each time you inhale. The odors ranged from deadly sulphur to animal carcass through rotting vegetation; the fragrances from far off sea salt to sweet fruit pies baking, including ripening summer crops and heavenly fried chicken and seafood. Most often you'll encounter a maddening mix of any three to five of these, and more, too--unidentified, sure, but instantly remembered should you ever pass by again.

New Orlean's famous French Quarter is different. Here, every city block has its own peculiar scent. The few block of Bourbon street between St. Peter and Bienville is oppressive. The smells are largely rotting garbage, vomitus and excrement smells plus others I don't recognize. The sights seem to confirm that no one here is happy; everyone desperate: the locals on the make desperate to suck the next dollar out of the brushcut and coiffed, rounded pink middle-American boys and girls desperate to suck "experience" out of New Orleans. Fail to quicken your pace and avert your eyes when passing the fleshpots (at once viscerally and intensely attractive and just as intensely repulsive in nearly the same organs), their hands are on your shoulders and back and fingers tug on your sleeve. (is there a possibility I'm guilty of slightly more than failing to quicken and avert? Ummm.)

I return to my hotel to wash for dinner. Panic is a point like one of those black spots in your eye that darts over to a different locus when you try to examine it, but never disappears--but in my head not my eye. The rest of my body seems to take the brunt of Bourbon's Street's oppression, and I'm slow of foot and heavy of shoulder, my entrails sunk deep in my abdomen. Misgivings. Why have I come here?

2010-08-06T16:34:00.004-05:00

First post in NO. Day 7.

I've only been NO a few hours, but everyone here seems a little subdued, even slightly unhappy. At least people speak more quietly -- they come to life at night maybe. We'll see.
I checked in and parked my car about 8 blocks away and on my way back from the parking lot to the B&B with all the stuff I had forgotten (natch) in the car, including a framed 8X10 of ms--like, I know, I know; stupid, eh?--carrying a picture of your dead wife around on vacation--I stopped in to have lunch at Fiorella's on Decatur (their specialty is Fried Chicken--and it IS good--but they were out of oysters [do you even serve oysters in August?]) and I didn't exactly set the photograph up on the table on purpose, but it was face up on top of my notebook, another book and some papers. Anyway, although of the two waitresses I had the middle aged one, the twothirdsways pretty twenty something one kept looking at me and smiling. The mind of a 30-pounds-overweight and on the short side, fifty (can I say -ish? Nah, guess not) year old (hey, at least I'm not balding) widower... boggles. Still, my grip on reality still can curb my considerable vanity from running away THAT far! I noticed, too, that had I brutally inflicted multiple fatal stab wounds on my waitress screaming that the red beans were cold, the stunning eighteen year old houri that had entered the restaurant five minutes behind me would never have picked me out of a line-up.

Day 7. Red Stick

2010-08-05T10:38:00.008-05:00

It thundered and poured all night but it cleared up for me to make Mass @ St. Agnes. Found it in time for confession with bad directions, one educated surmise and one stone dead guess. Again, someone wanted me to find it. Agnes? Simple respectful celebration in the Ordinary Form nothing to complain about, but I'm still in withdrawal after the Oratory. The church itself is impressive, but I forgot my camera in the hotel. The priest knows people from Canada (I confessed being from Canada as one of my sins)--Alberta--and he asked if I knew them (okay, he never asked that). Within seconds of reaching the hotel after Mass, the sky opened up once more with capaciously diluvian intentions.

After cooling my heels (or jets, I can't remember) for a coupla hours in the hotel, we set out for New Orleans in a steady but much reduced rain. Great White, Once Bitten, Twice Shy came on the radio and got me ta thinkin'. So I did some research and discovered that twice bitten is not four times shy, but three. And like you I erroneously jumped to the conclusion: n times bitten, n+1 times shy. For upon further investigation it was revealed to me that three times bitten, five times shy--and shouldn't it have been obvious from the beginning that Fibonacci was behind it all?

I called it "Nawlins" once quietly to myself in the car, but even though I was alone, I blushed; so we won't be doing that again. It's sunny here.

Entering LA day six

2010-08-04T23:21:00.005-05:00

I wish my right ear weren't deaf instead of my left, then I could listen to the radio in the car when the windows are open. Instead, I sang: Me and Bobby McGee and Don't Get Around Much Anymore, both twice straight through and I thought about ms (somewhere near Salinas, I let her slip away; awfully different, without you). Then I cried for while and afterward repeated snatches of Don't Get Around all the way through St. Francisville.

Now I'm busted flat in Baton Rouge.
No, wait! Here--I have my credit card and it looks like about forty-five bucks in cash. Sorry about that; false alarm.

More day 6 in MS

2010-08-04T22:37:00.006-05:00

In Natchez the river stinks. It's flat and broad and iron rust and grey and it looks dead, but it's not, it's just very tired. While the Mississippi in Minnesota can betray a gentle but buoyant hope and even down in Missouri can cling to those expectations, nowhere on its length does it manifest that boyish exuberance that comes only from springing--a synonym of giving, not coincidentally.
The Mississipi is a taking river, sucking up all the waters of every rivulet and stream from the Rockies to the Appalachians. Like an old man (to dust off a hackneyed metaphor) who's spent his entire life taking, who once vainly expected to find life restoring novelty in each avaricious aquisition, and whose impotent lust finally now is worn off, in Natchez the river is jaded, flat and broad and it looks dead, but it's not, it's just very very tired.
In New Orleans where the river seems to lie in pieces, I fully expect to find them celebrating its wake.

Note to self: Change boyish to youthful.

Day six in Vicks (burg)

2010-08-04T22:05:00.009-05:00

I like Vicksburg; my foot started to feel better on the Vicksburg National Military Park Tour (I recommend it, if you haven't been: it's very moving, and large scale--actually surrounding the town just where the Yankee besiegers and Confederate defenders did at the time); The people there are very friendly--it's the first place I'd say I'd encountered true Southern friendliness--and industrious. And I did one of my favorite things to do in a strange city--got my hair cut. And I got my picture taken with the barber (shamelessly allowing her to believe that the haircut was so good, I was gonna show the photo to my barber at home).

It's a picturesque city with still many very magnificent plantation houses kept up, but what they really know how to do is cemeteries. On top of all the memorials to fallen officers which simply are absolutely everywhere in town, the graveyards just poke themselves out at you, ironically demanding your attention where the graves themselves, row upon row, are individually so humble and nondescript--the private not just the military graves. The whole town's a memento mori--but more: a testament to courageous, anonymous and thankless death. We flatter ourselves that people will remember us when we're gone. Not for long, buddy, not for long.

There are some run down parts of Vicksburg and some people hurting, but nothing like the degradation in Memphis (especially in the South). Pray for the people of Memphis. ( I was gonna write, "they need hope... and change" but that would be insensitive of me).

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Fruit only idea died after seeing "Solly's Hot Tamales" on Washington Street and admirably resisting temptation only to discover I've been heading down Washington in the wrong direction. I defy anyone to drive past Solly's Hot Tamales est 1939 twice. The tamales are twice as good and half again as Abe's in Clarksdale.

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Driving through Port Gibson the main thoroughfare corresponding to highway 61 is known as Church street (as in "Save Church Street") and it is literally lined with churches, one after another First Baptist, Second Presbyterian, Third Methodist, Second Baptist, Third Presbyterian, Second Methodist, First Episcopalian, First Methodist--I couldn't figure out why the Methodists rans in the opposite direction to everyone else.

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You DO know I'm just making most of this stuff up, right

-----------------------

Update August 8: I only just noticed now that the enormous couple of sunburnt whales I met on the Vicksburg Park tour and kepts running into (not literally, I should point out to those who know it's a driving tour) at the many points of interest, who said they were from Louisiana and who told me each time we met to "be careful" in New Orleans--were in fact angels.

So... I apologize for being so unobservant and slow.

On the sixth day...

2010-08-04T09:06:00.005-05:00

I missed 6:30 Mass at St. Mary's in Vicksburg. Slept through my wake up call and my alarm. Own damned fault: on this computer much too late.

At breakfast I got my first southern, "Bless your heart," of the journey--maybe of my life if you don't count jocular ones--after I apologized for standing, "confused and dazed," like a slack jawed lump in someones way. I'm going to treasure it in said heart. Anyway, the fruit only idea took a little knock 'cause I slept late so there were no fruit left at breakfast.

Day V - Northanger Abbey (No Spoilers--they're unnecessary)

2010-08-04T07:24:00.005-05:00

Day five comes to a close with me navigating my Chevy up the drive of Northanger Abbey, General Tilney at my door graciously to hand me down...

Naw, just kidding. I meant to say I finished Austin's (Jane, not Steve) Northanger Abbey at lunch and the ending is horrible. What's more, the authoress knows it is and jokes about it. The last snippet of narrative relates the facts Henry and Catherine walked to the Allens' house and back after a short visit. The rest is just the authoress herself--not even the "narrator"--telling us she's not going to write the ending, but here's how it would end if she did, complete with a little, "Remember that little machina I introduce back in chapter twenty summat? I forgot to tell you there was a deus in it; anyway, he popped out, so that solved that problem, right?"
There was a place for the authoress to slip back into the first person she began the novel with, so I'm not complaining about that. Just that it should've been two or three chapters later, when the story was actually finished.

Dafe I've

2010-08-04T00:47:00.008-05:00

Breakfast at memphis econolodge (actually in the basement of the club across the driveway). Self toasted--in a broken toaster--bagel and more bad coffee all in plastic and polystyrene was so tawdry it was literally funny. The News Readers on the TV were scaring me with tales of "record breaking" (they actually repeated the phrase several times) heat in the mid-South.
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"How ya doin'" seems to be the standard greeting in this part of the country.
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Doh! Looking for Madison Avenue in Memphis (you can see where they tape Mad Men) I run up third past Jefferson then past Adams and I see Washington up ahead and I STILL don't realize I'm heading in the wrong direction.
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So you're from the Great White North; you're rolling down the 61 at 70 or 75 mph (you don't actually know because you don't have cruise and your speedometer is in kilometers) in 104 degree heat with the windows wide open; not daring to tempt the A/C to fail in case you need it in Arizona; wondering seriously if the engine temp guage needle really hasn't tiny-fraction-of-an-inched up since you last glanced at it... And every two or five miles you come up to a bridge over a little stream or gully with sign just ahead of it warning, "Bridge May Ice in Cold Weather"
Do you drive into oncoming traffic?
----------------------
The smell of hot humid Tunica county MS is an order of magnitude more intense than that of Jefferson county MO and commensurately more affecting. Fortunately, they've fine tuned the growth:decay ratio to more like 5 to 1. It's a pleasure just to breathe. Sometimes, I never want to stop.
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Vicksburg, MS. Foot hurts; touch of gout I think; been eating nothing but meat the last three days. Also it doesn't smell gangrenous and it hurts to much for leprosy... so ya, definitely gout... or cancer. I'll eat nothing but fruit tomorrow and see what happens...

New facts learned earlier in Day 4 about Day 3

2010-08-03T09:45:00.002-05:00

At lunch I was reading the Preface to the Vatican Edition of the Roman Chant and on page xvj at paragraph VII it says in part,

When the Preface is finished, the choir goes on with the Sanctus and Benedictus. If these are sung to Gregorian chant they must be given without a break; if not, Benedictus may follow the Consecration...

That is what happened yesterday. A polyphonic Sanctus preceded and a polyphonic Benedictus followed the Consecration, confusing me no end... well, end, I guess.

Day four ends in Memphis, TN

2010-08-03T09:11:00.004-05:00

Beale Street is a cartoon parody of... I guess, Beale Street. I stopped in the first place without a cover charge and caught the The Dr. "Feelgood" (naturally) Potts Band, fronted by Dr "F" Potts himself (naturally). The band was quietly competent if a little staid, and Dr F had one of those great fat blues voices like cranking the Bass AND clicking the Loudness button, if mic'd to distortion and a tiny bit out of tune. He played a mix of well-WELL-worn (I'm talkin' REALLY well-worn)standards and material from his own CD which he introduced by track number (making me laugh out loud, as they say).
I went next door for a pulled pork sandwich. And the band there was SMOKIN'!! But after their break they started to play again and were actually quite good (see what I did there with the "smoking" joke? Funny, eh?) But, seriously, the two white kids on guitar and bass (the first with a thin white person blues voice, I actually found much more credible than Dr. F's) were really good and the drummer was nuts amazing. Crazy imaginative but always always in time. Utterly fresh!
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Memphis has some N words who really know how to handle pan. I wonder if an angry rebuke would have turned them away, but that wasn't in me (not to my credit--I'm just built like: always greedy; only rarely angry). I ended up just giving it up, certain enough that my time in town was short enough that they wouldn't have time to take it all.
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I think I'll try to make saying "The 'N' word" as taboo as saying the "N" word. Then if it ever comes to pass, I'll giggle myself to asphyxiation, a suitably ironic death.

Day four continues on hwy sixty-one south. I've just entered Perry County

2010-08-03T08:49:00.007-05:00

When you live on a river like the Red, it's so little affecting, like a single nondescript tree, you can stare at it every day and walk away unchanged. When you live on the Mississippi, like a terrible mountain, you don't want to look at it. It's too insistent that you come down to the end with it, refusing to grant permission to turn around and contemplate its Source (that must be done sneakily). It's like falling from the sky--or any other activity that comes to an abrupt and unpleasant end with no second chances--I mean, like life.
So people don't look at the river. In the big cities they cater to tourists who wanna see it for the romance, but in the towns and farms they don't look at it--except perhaps those with an already fey disposition, I don't know. You can't see the river from town, there's a railroad between you and it (I asked one fellow if the river was just on the other side of that right-of-way over there; I might have asked him if his victims were just in that freezer over there). And along highway running its length, you're separated by not only the train tracks, but the next set or next two sets of hills or at least a broad muddy cultivated flat (cultivated with what? I'll have to find out). You can't see the river, only the steam above it. But the mist, too, reminds me of death.
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There are quite a lot of roadside Marian shrines about.
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Later...
Stopped to take in the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal at Saint Mary's of the Barrens Church in Perryville, MO for another three decades and to collect on a couple of--uh-- shall we say favors?
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Passing through Cape Girardeau, Mary made me turn off 61 onto William to ensure I saw her Cathedral (a fellow in Ste Gen mentioned it, but didn't say where it was, and I didn't find out till I drove up to it), but I forgot to wear a shirt so equally she ensured the doors were locked. So I walked once around it, and on the fourth corner I looked up to see a little fountain garden just in time to glimpse a cardinal flitting off from a drink before flying up to a tree across William Street. "Wrong diocese!" I yelled after her. Old St. Vincent's was also locked... Odd. I thought old St. Vincent didn't get around much anymore.

Day 4

2010-08-03T08:13:00.006-05:00

Mass @ Ste Genevieve (Ste. Genevieve, MO), after yesterday is like crashing to earth. The cruciform church itself is very fine but with a small altar plopped down in the front half of the sanctuary like a card table, a very tall priest (with a very short alb) and one elderlish server in civies offering a simple ordinary form Mass in English, it seemed like a little girl playing tea party in a palace with a plastic toy tea set while the good china lay behind her in an ancient cabinet. The tea was real anyhow, so, however humble, it was no counterfeit.
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Breakfast a the Old Brick House in St. Gen. Apparently it's the oldest brick building west of the Mississipi to offer free wi-fi (1790 I think they said).
---
Actually the new altar in St. Gen was lovely, with fine carving in front. It's just small and, to me, looks a little out of place in such a grand sanctuary.
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Stopped in a St. Mary's (in St. Mary, MO) for a decade for ms--another church built when architects and artisans still knew that beauty lies in forms not in informalism. No one around. Church door unlocked. (Only the certainty that no one reads this blog quells the concern that someone will now use this info to go steal the silverware).

Day 3. Cont.

2010-08-02T11:19:00.005-05:00

In the valley, leaving Jefferson County and entering Ste Genevieve. The crickets are incessant; their whispers culminate in the roar. "Breathe in the fragrance," they say: wet, sweet, lush and green-- to my untutored senses, used to the frozen and sterile North, almost jungle-like; three parts growth and one part decay it fixes my attentions soul and body down to my bowels insisting, "you are temporary." Don't I know it.

Up on the crest, highest around, I catch sight the great rolling waves of treetops running East, bluer and bluer they recede until finally after one more crest lies unglimpsed the brown ribbon--how far?--the brown ribbon that will join me to the sea.

Day III

2010-08-01T16:43:00.010-05:00

Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales begins promptly at 10 with the ringing of bells. The priest enters anticlimactically at the end of a great procession; such a slight figure with tiny face and hands he looks a callow sixteen, reminding me of some medieval child saint whose holiness at eight years of age is so profound he is allowed to take Holy Orders at thirteen. By 10:14 the last echoes of the Introit have died away and the Kyrie immediately follows; it is short lasting only three minutes or so and we have the Gloria well under our belts by 10:25. Things are spinning along. The homily is largely on pride and so speaks strength to my weakness. Cloths are laid on the altar rails at the Offeratory in anticipation of Communion, a practice with which I was not familiar. The polyphonous Sanctus and Agnus Dei are breathtaking.

The family sitting in the pew directly in front of me are of three daughters well bespectacled, well mantilla'ed and deadly pious looking the image of their mother but for the colour of their mantillas (white) and the lack of a certain gentle and wistful softness only a few years and motherhood can bring; a fourth daughter, too young for mantilla has beautiful big black doomed eyes with which she moons at me; and finally, the son just on the cusp of toddlerhood. Before Mass his father stroked his eyebrows and his lashes blinked closed and open more and more slowly, finally settling on a closed position. I stare at them and think of ms and I cry and I cry again as I write this.

I saw them again all lined up for confession except the three youngest and blest them (for what that's worth) as I left.

Later the Cardinals beat the Pirates as I eat tapas like the antipasti ms used to make.

On my way to lunch I stop and listen to a shirtless old man with grass shears in a lawn chair (with an empty lawn chair beside him--meant for me?) gripe about Mexicans and city hall until I realize there will be no way to end the conversation except for me just to leave. The conversation began, "Know why I'm cutting this grass here (about 2 sq yards) with these?" I resolve to go back and share a bottle of beer with him and sit and listen, but he's gone.

Day 2 finishes up in St Louis.

2010-08-01T16:40:00.002-05:00

Exposition, Vespers and Benediction in the Fearful St. Louis Cathedral.

DAY 2 begins in a fog (so what else is new?)

2010-08-01T07:59:00.003-05:00

On the road by seven the fog finally lifted by seven twenty (that's a dangling participle, to those who were asking me) giving me my first glimpse of Iowa. It turns out I was misinformed: they DO have corn, there! I also saw some miniature cows which I assumed were closer than they appeared and if you take exit 21 off the I80 you come eventually to a town called What Cheer (no exclamation point, but hadn't there oughta be?).

In Hannibal MO (Birthplace of Mark Twain--though, in one of those strange quirks of literary history, none of the locals knew he was called that until much later) I ate sausage gravy which stands up in peaks on biscuits, and I caught my first glimpse of the Mississippi River. It is not nearly as crystal clear or fast flowing as I'd been led to believe.

Day 1 (cont)

2010-08-01T07:42:00.007-05:00

Entered MN @ 4:04 PM. Wilkin County has cornfields and Otter Tail County has great rolling yellow sandy hills.

I fell asleep for a while; suddenly I was in Iowa without understanding why (oh wah). Night comes much earlier and inkier in Iowa. A sickly sweet warm mist lay on Ames I didn't know warned of a dense marine-style fog which was to last the entire night swallowing up Des Moines and then Newton, where the promise of tomorrow's race had poured gentle American folk into all inns to brimming. Slept in a fog, in a car in a fog.

Day 1: July 30.

2010-07-31T23:01:00.006-05:00

Interstate Culture, that strange ersatz community of travellers and truckers, gas station attendants, convenience store clerks and motel employees--has a lot in common with InterNET Culture. Everyone is superficially friendly (we'll save for another day my argument that even the worst Internet flamers are actually superficially friendly--at least we can agree that they're harmless); nobody knows anybody; nobody trusts anybody; nobody actually knows anything or if they do there's no way for you actually to know that; and it's the same damn thing no matter where you go. My first encounter with Interstate Culture, this trip was immediately upon entering N Dakota at Pembina. One comfort you CAN count on: the worst cup of coffee known to man. Styled "French Roast" it was worse, if anything, than the little foil pouches of Nescafe they give in Greece to American and English tourists whose sensibilities are too delicate for Greek Coffee.

I expect to drive South tomorrow... in my car.

2010-07-29T09:54:00.003-05:00

It might rain... Probably will.

Rene Descartes comments on a blog

2010-07-26T16:13:00.001-05:00

"Methinks therefore me is."

Here are nine words that start with the letters T E N.

2010-07-22T10:15:00.002-05:00

tenet
tenant
tenable
tennis
tenuous
tendentious
tenacious
tensile
tendril

I can't think of a tenth.

One hundredth day

2010-07-09T14:35:00.001-05:00

Of late, I've taken to accompanying each Ave in the fourth decade with a prayer for an everlasting perfection. They change day to day but there are some I pray every day (okay, you got me: I mean every day I make it to the fourth decade--most days).

For example,

{(tacit) Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,} grant her perfect everlasting peace.

This requires no further explanation. We mean what the church means by peace in the prayer resquiat in pace.

I like verbs with past tense same as present.

2010-06-10T16:47:00.002-05:00

I cut her sandwiches into quarters. I cut mine in half.

Epitaph Worries.

2010-06-08T13:45:00.005-05:00

As of Monday, yesterday, we are worried. The people commissioned to design, build and engrave the stone, which is to be for both beloved ms and your own cricket, seem to think a single epitaph should apply to both of us. Leaving aside the fact that the participle "Affidata" is singular and feminine, it seems obvious to me that each person buried under a stone should have his own epitaph. Having chosen interment in a casket over cremation for myself, I think I want mine to be: "Still wasting space", but I guess I'll give the kids the final say on that.

Epitaph

2010-06-08T13:36:00.003-05:00

As of Sunday, two days ago, we've decided on:

Affidata al Cuore Immacolato di Maria

per la moglie strega

2010-06-03T11:50:00.002-05:00

O Jesus:

We pray that she be enfolded within Your blessed Mother's most holy and immaculate heart;
That she might turn at any moment to feel against her cheek of the cold steel which pierce the same graceful heart,
And so suddenly to find her own heart pierced with a love for you as keen as any one of those seven dolors.

2010-06-01T11:28:00.003-05:00

Mrs Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.

Scrooge's effects were so light. Why are hers so heavy?

Double dactyl

2010-05-27T16:50:00.001-05:00

Grommity Grammity

How anonymity

Gives me the license to

Spout like a fool

Maybe quite typic’lly

Brooking no cavil, I

Rest on the dictum of

My blog, my rule.

My people don't work

2010-05-27T13:47:00.003-05:00

The notion that the word liturgy means 'work of the people' seems to be popular among a certain type of liturgical progressive not so intent on returning the Mass to the people as on putting his own personal stamp on it. The larger problem with the formulation is that it is not strictly true. While the word leitos for people or public and ergo for “to do” form its Greek roots, the word liturgy was not cobbled together from its roots by early Christians, but taken whole in the word leitourgia from Greek culture. In that context, the word meant “public work” actually of an elevated or rich person, for (not by) the public. What the progressive seem to have in mind is more a new coinage, demourgia—ringing uncomfortably close to the Gnostic concept of the demiurge. Considered seriously, we must humbly admit that the liturgy is not the work of the people, but the work of Christ given through his Spouse the Holy Catholic Church for the benefit of the people. This consideration should be enough to quell any temptation we have to engage in any such tinkering with the Mass as for example (as I have heard recently) altering the words of the Agnus Dei.

a quarter century

2010-05-19T14:24:00.005-05:00

She took me, damaged goods as they say, without reservation some twenty-four years ago--I'm almost certain she never, even at the end, knew just how damaged--and slowly and painstakingly went a long long way toward fixing me. I never even realized what she was doing (she was no scold); sometimes she even allowed me to think it was she who was in need of repair.

The project, however, is still far from complete. I pray she may still give it some of her attention.

Our last conversation

2010-05-17T17:24:00.002-05:00

I asked her, "Are you afraid?"

She said, "No."

Conflicting requests

2010-05-14T11:34:00.011-05:00

The Church prays:

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.
And let perpetual light shine upon her.
May she rest in peace.
Amen.

But I ask that she experience (among many other things) an everlasting falling into joy, an eternal coronation like unto and only a little less than that of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, an exquisite cardinal moment of perfection on which all creation--time, space and matter--hinges.

Am I wrong? I cannot quite reconcile these prayers. The Church's plea seems to be for a sublime sort of sleep. But sleep, to me

(as, it would seem, to the Psalmist, For there is no one in death, that is mindful of thee, {6:6 Vulg} as well as to the Preacher, For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know nothing more, {Eccl. 9:6}),

means forgetfulness; and eternity, to me, subsumes the notion of an expected future universal resurrection. What's more I'm praying through the intercession of men and women who also have gone down to eternal forgetfulness, praying that she knows even as she has been known.

If I am not wrong and our prayers are not incompatible, then the answer lies surely in the gaps in my understandings of words like eternity or perpetuity, experience, repose, peace and... and the list doesn't end, really. This is what I hope.

I'm wearing it now.

2010-05-12T11:54:00.004-05:00

I just found out this morning that I have a shirt that has buttons on the cuffs that I'd never before buttoned myself.

40th Day

2010-05-11T13:33:00.002-05:00

Well, she did it. What's more, she made it look easy.

Do I need a new prescription? Is that all?

2010-05-06T15:52:00.003-05:00

The horizon that seemed so near I pleased to obscure with a clutter of vanity heaped upon vanity now seems immensely distant and the space between barren.

Ero ism o sono ism.

2010-05-02T20:26:00.004-05:00

"She is in a better place now," are words meant to console. But, to say nothing of their being taken together, each of the seven words taken separately easily might underlie ten thousand words of contentious and disturbing debate. Well, perhaps not "a", but, then again, maybe so.

Olympic Coverage on Mother Corp.

2010-02-26T14:08:00.003-06:00

I won't say it's explicitly part of the mission statement of the CBC automatically to exclude Christ and Christianity from the airwaves, but in their radio coverage of the winter games recently I heard their announcer give details of an Olympic awards ceremony at "BCE Place".

Sad music in my parish.

2010-02-12T17:20:00.004-06:00

Our new priest has instituted a music program in which Chant and Latin hymns are forbidden and in which the music draws heavily from post-Vatican II American sources. A few months ago, fearing from things that I had heard that he would take this very step, I wrote him a letter. He seemed pleased to receive it and told me the following Sunday that he was working on a reply. I have received no reply from him in writing, but only the appearance of a new modern (pronounced "godawful") Hymnal in the pews, the almost complete abandonment of the organ, and way - way more electric piano at mass. I mean no disrespect, but if this is what he intended as his reply, I take it to be the equivalent of the raised and extended middle finger. For posterity and with identifying info removed, I reproduce the letter here. If he ever does reply in writing, I will attach it to this post. I welcome criticism from my many readers.

Dear Father
While I was unable to attend the parish music information meeting held last Saturday, it would seem that mine is one of the voices for whose return you made an appeal on Sunday. I note further your undoubted enthusiasm for the establishment of a body of some form or forms of sacred music along with musicians and singers able to draw from it for the enrichment of the liturgy. With this in mind, I hope I might offer my personal thoughts.

I have been a parishioner of St X for the last {a number more than ten} years after having attended for several years from outside the parish. As much as I appreciated in many ways the pastoral care of Fr. Y, as a music lover, the one thing that was often a source of dismay was the state of sacred music both in the parish and in the Church as a whole.

Inspired by a certain understanding of the aims of the Second Vatican Council, a rich and still fruitful patrimony of ancient sacred music had been set aside, as it seemed to me, for the mostly insipid tunes and sometimes profane or heterodox lyrics of a small cadre of 1970’s composers. Even when older hymns and chorales were tapped—a great many of them imported directly from Protestant hymnodical traditions—performances frequently were suited more to nightclub or campfire than to church. This is not to say that there were no bright spots: many examples of musicians and singers sounding truly Catholic hymns both old and new in the vernacular with voices raised to the glory of God and not to their own; just that there were these disappointments and so much of our treasured Catholic musical inheritance simply missing.

So when I was asked about four years ago to help found a choir in the parish that would have as its aim—secondary of course to adoration and worship of God—the revival of chant and polyphony and the return in that context of music truly integrated into the liturgy, I leapt at the opportunity. Since that time we have been working hard to cultivate a command of the media of chant and polyphony while at the same time striving to remain obedient to the wishes of the parish priest and respectful of the sensibilities of the congregation. It was not a case of foisting chant and Latin on the parish, but rather of slowly and painstakingly reintroducing the parish to their richness, beauty and importance and allowing them to take their proper place along side the standard English repertoire.

If the proper interpretation of Vatican II required the summary jettison of music essential—not just incidental—to centuries of liturgical practice, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium would not, as I am sure you are aware, have granted Gregorian chant “pride of place” as “proper to the Roman liturgy” and would not have singled out polyphony especially as “by no means excluded”. If Latin were meant to be suppressed in the post-conciliar Church, the 1967 instruction Musicam Sacram would not have provided that “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved”, and Pope Paul VI of blessed memory would not under its auspices have provided the church with the 1974 document Jubilate Deo (see http://www.ceciliaschola.org/pdf/jubilateb.pdf) allowing even small congregations to enjoy the manifold blessings of the tradition of plainsong.

As for that tradition, the value of chant in worship must not be underestimated. Its transcendental qualities are known to non-Christian faiths as they were in pre-Christian traditions. It is well known that many chant melodies predate their score-notation by many years, and it is theorized by some that a few are nearly as ancient as the psalms themselves. Certainly the roots of chant lie firmly in the Hebrew tradition of psalmody which was carried into the early Christian Church.

One might reasonably argue that the remoteness and difficulty of chant preclude the “active participation” in the liturgy called for by Vatican II, by hampering the ability of the congregation to “sing along”. It must be admitted there is an element of validity to this argument for some; naturally it is desirable that there continue to be offered masses at which music is sung entirely in the vernacular with as much vocal participation as possible from the congregation. However, for many others the dynamic will be just the opposite.

The objection is answered in part by considering the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI’s writings focusing on the more important internal dimensions of “active participation”: a level of involvement in prayer, a focus on the Holy Mysteries taking place at the altar, uniting one’s intentions with the priest’s, recollecting oneself before Holy Communion and making thanksgiving afterwards. Without these and like levels of participation, singing along to the hymns is useless. It can even be maintained that as much as our joining in the singing of folk and pop style songs excites the emotions, our listening to chant—even if the words are not understood—elevates the spirit not only by the melodies themselves soothing the passions that the soul may be lifted, but by the authentic voice of the Church being raised up to God in the words. In this way chant is able actually to enhance active participation in the liturgy truly lending itself to powerful use as a sacramental.

I believe this benefit obtains even granting that understanding of the words be nil. But I would not concede that much: if Latin chant were introduced into the ordinary of the Mass in a systematic way, very quickly the words Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi would be exactly as accessible to the congregation as the words Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world. Truthfully, in either language the greater import of the words remains a profound mystery, as it must. Two advantages of choosing to enunciate the former over the latter are 1) that we speak in the mother tongue of the Church and join in her catholic voice and 2) that the Latin words and melodies of chant are so inextricably bound as to form one organic whole much as our own bodies and souls form whole persons.

A second objection that one might raise is that our particular schola was simply not accomplished enough to realize the myriad benefits of chant. This objection has a great deal more power and not a little truth. But the solution is not to suppress chant and Latin, which would clearly be contrary to the will of the Church, but to foster it: first, I would humbly suggest, on the part of the pastor both by educating the congregation as a whole and by encouraging greater participation in chant by musicians from within the congregation; and secondly on the part of the choir itself both by self study and by practice, practice, practice.

Yours in Christ,

Euclid meets God (or doesn't)

2010-02-11T13:31:00.006-06:00

In a letter to my Protestant friend (MPF) (cc'd to my atheist friend (MAF)) concerning MAF I said,

it would be fruitful, if possible, more precisely to spline the curve of that twisted notion of the Divine from the roots of disbelief to the point where its tangent becomes true, that is to say orthodox.

Some discussion ensued in which MAF opined,

Believers are asymptotic to God (growing ever closer but never actually meeting). Non-believers are parallel to God (in the Euclidian sense).

He seems to have been implying nobody ever meets God. With this, MPF disagreed, saying,

The un-believer is obviously not parallel to God, since his distance from God is increasing... The believer is parallel to God, as the two lines meet in infinity.

(which Euclid might have found surprising, but never mind). After some discussion in which I did not join about the meanings of the word parallel, I replied at length,

As you all know, I love to beat dead metaphors as much as the next cretin. So, preposterously hoping this nag'll gallop a little further let me try this.

I like the notion that believers travel an asymptotic path toward God, never (in this life) meeting. What's more, we always view God around our own individual curve, so when we look toward God we don't see Him. Those greatly advanced in holiness travel through life so close to God they might almost turn and touch. Yet they're in the same position as anyone, seeing God around a curve, though they can more profoundly experience in this way that dark night ably described by the mystics: They run or are carried and so they look not at but in the same direction (nearly) as God; thus suddenly they can find Him absent as a child does when his father runs along beside and just behind his first two-wheeler.

At our deaths we must all hop the gap between our own curves and the True at which point our own paths will be trued. This, of course, is the function of Purgatory, and, the farther we are from the asymptote at our deaths the more jarring this correction will be--as through fire, for some. One of the frightening things about death is that it seems we will be losing a dimension of our existence, as the happy little locus free to range across the fruited cartesian plain views eternal imprisonment on the y-axis as a limitation. But those on the increasingly straight and narrow path so close to the asymptote will begin dimly to perceive the truth in the promise of an unfolding of vast and manifold dimensions of which the dreaded axis death is only the visible edge.

Where we go wrong is in assuming that it's different for unbelievers. No, the unbeliever is on the same species of asymptotic curve (this has the happy consequence of obviating debate on the meaning of parallel), he's just looking in the other direction. When he does look over his shoulder checking for God, he doesn't see Him, He's around the curve, same as for the rest of us. Unlike believers he is unpracticed in following the curve round in his heart and mind where his eye does not reach. {The preceding sentence, of course, refers to prayer} If the angle of his curve is very steep he won't even recognize a hint of God. I used the verb "spline" to describe sounding out another's curve (without, naturally, knowing its parameters) as perhaps a "fruitful" step in helping to bend it toward the limit (this itself a spiritual work of mercy). But it is the wicked not the unbeliever, pace {MPF}, who is actually traveling in the other direction; who is willingly steepening his curve and further obscuring God and goodness, making unbelief ever easier, ever more plausible; who, when he hops the gap, will crash and burn, unable to be trued. This is why wickedness will foster unbelief and why unbelief can also lead to wickedness. It is also why metanoia is so often characterized simply as a turning around.

What {MAF} in his heart of hearts recognizes, if I may be quite bold, is that the plane, or space if you will, in which we are all swimming these paths is at least a moral space; that reality has an intrinsic (non-constructed, non-culturally programmed, non-arbitrary, but real) moral character, giving the path itself, real meaning. {MAF}'s problem is not so much that he doesn't believe--for he does and by that I mean he doesn't think it is "superstitious" to love his neighbor as himself--but that he erroneously thinks it is of any consequence that when he looks for God he doesn't see anyone, and what he does see--others' conceptions of God--he (rightly) sees as fairly ridiculous. He knows, or has a fair idea when he is traveling in the Good direction, though he despairs of seeing God--for the moment anyway. Of course our mortal span is a mere moment, but I see no reason not to hope that some beauteous (if distant) day he will ask in wonder, "when did I see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink?"

COEXIST

2010-01-06T15:41:00.005-06:00

I personally love the COEXIST (2nd person plural imperative) sticker and would have one on my car (next to my old "nuclear plants are built better than Jane Fonda" sticker) if I could find the right one. For me it conjures up the image, in the one issuing the mandate, of a one assuming all power and authority unto himself and charging all kingdoms to quake before him. It freshens my day in a lovely Ozymandias moment, one with a gentle twist of irony.

2010-01-05T14:14:00.001-06:00

I'd be in a bad mood today, if I weren't in a subjunctive mood.

2009-12-18T14:25:00.001-06:00

Whenever I see one of those My karma ran over your dogma bumper stickers, I always picture a little toy car running over the back of a St Bernard. If I could photo-shop, I would have one myself.

I wish I'd said this:

2009-10-23T16:17:00.003-05:00

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment.

but it was Joseph Ratzinger. [The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 198]

The much maligned parasite

2009-10-19T12:07:00.004-05:00

We scorn the lowly parasite and we make it a great insult to call our brethren by that name, yet we kill to survive, all of us. That is to say we presume upon the very lives of our benefactors in plant and animal kingdoms. Meanwhile, our friend the cuddly parasite merely presumes upon the hospitality of its host. Or perhaps it is better to kill than to sap. Is it?

What this world needs is more sadness.

2009-10-16T13:24:00.007-05:00

Fortunately, there appears to be a new retail outlet in the shopping center (we call "The Mall") of the suburban acreage on which I domicile. I would surmise it to be a provider of any type of exquisite mental anguish from the slightest hint of nostalgia down to the deepest existential sorrow. It's called Dolorama, although, come to think of it, I may have that spelling wrong.

Thesis: There is no good news that is not Heavenly.

2009-10-15T11:38:00.008-05:00

The word "cancer" is actually quite beautiful. We most of us can recall some time in our lives when a respected figure of authority has challenged us to perform a new and difficult task with, "can you you do it?" and the jubilant confidence with which we replied, "yes, I cancer!" Similarly the word "tumor" invokes memories of, in our salad days, sitting in the bistros and cafes just off campus discussing philosophy with friend and mentor Dr.-----, between times raising a hand and a pair of digits calling out, 'tumor! Waitress, please, tumor!"

You want a really ugly word? “Neoplasm”–it encapsulates everything that is ill about novelty in this life.

More on my letter.

2009-10-01T16:33:00.002-05:00

After the press printed it we had a little fun in the comment box at the paper. I cut and paste it here just to remember the good times. I've only reversed the order because I prefer oldest to newest and changed names to protect our precious Internet anonymity.

Posted by: W.E. Sep 30 8:02 AM

cricket’s sermon begs for response. Every sentence cobbled into this pontification is devoid of truth or logic and stands as a testament to why so many atheists simply shake their heads and say nothing. Firstly, the book review in question cites the fact that around 40% of Americans believe that the earth was created, magically, less than 10,000 years ago. I hardly consider 120 million people in an educationally advanced nation to be a 'straw windmill'. Secondly, the tired argument that the support for scientific fact is somehow the same as 'steadfast faith' is contradictory to the point of silliness. Science is faithless. Scientists carefully research and confirm before supporting a theory and, if that theory should later be proven wrong, they acknowledge, learn and move on. And why disparage Fundamentalists? At least these 'bible thumpers' have the courage to stand behind their beliefs instead of ignoring or paraphrasing those parts of the holy books that are inconveniently ridiculous or inhumanly cruel. 'Signs of a creator'? Give me a break. There is a hundred times more proof in the existence of invisible quarks than there is for any 'god'. And, finally, I must dispute cricket' musical analogy. It is the atheist who hears the amazing symphony of life and the universe. The melodic and off-key. The harmonies and dis-chords. The theists hear one conductor with the same sheet of music... afraid to turn the page.

Posted by: J.C. Sep 30 10:07 AM

Allow me to second W.E's cogent remarks cricket recycles the tired canard that evolution is all a process of chance, but anyone with an elementary knowledge of Darwin's writings knows this is untrue. Here's what Richard Dawkins says in a recent interview in Maclean's: "If it [evolution] was all a theory of chance ... you would be right to disbelieve it. People will say, 'You're never going to convince me that something as complicated as an eye could come about by sheer chance.' And the answer is that natural selection is the very opposite of sheer chance. Natural selection is a non-random process."

So, please cricket, do a little more reading. Either Darwin or the wonderfully accessible books on evolution by Dawkins will do the trick. That's much more fruitful than relying on the embarrasing argument by design - an argument conclusively refuted by David Hume over 300 hundred years ago.

Posted by: rt Sep 30 10:30 AM

Well said, W.E.!

Posted by: cricket Sep 30 1:45 PM

Thank you W.E. for your critique of my letter. It allows me to elaborate a little.
1) It doesn't matter how many people hold that the earth was created (supernaturally not magically) since 10,000 BCE. It remains straw man for the atheist since proving them wrong does nothing to disprove the existence of God.
2) I did not say support for scientific fact/method is the same as steadfast faith, but that it is only in blind faith that one can hold the position that science can reap answers from the field of metaphysics--particularly the answer they require, viz that God does not exist.
3) I had hoped that my "disparagement" of B-thumping fundies would be taken rather as gentle ribbing. Certainly many fundamentalist Christians are to be admired for their courage and for their selfless goodness which is beacon to all--just as many atheists are to be admired. That doesn't make them right though.
4) I did not cast doubt on the existence of the quark as you seem to think, but what remains unexplained is the real intelligibility of the Universe.
5)Again you return to your straw men. Yes, there are Christians afraid to explore science honestly. But there are others beginning with the Church father Gregory of Nyssa, continuing through medieval scientists and philosophers Albert Magnus and Aquinas, through to this day, who look at God's creation every bit as clearly as any atheist. We see and hear all the chords and cacophonies you do--and by Grace honor the Composer of your "symphony".

Posted by: J.C.Sep 30 5:51 PM

cricket: Atheists do not claim that it is possible to disprove God's existence in the same way that evolutionists claim it is possible to disprove Intelligent Design. These are separate questions. There is a mountain of evidence, much of it catalogued by Dawkins, that exposes the threadbare nature of anti-evolutionary arguments. When it comes to God's existence, all that atheists point to is the suspicious lack of evidence that he is there at all. Of course, science can't "reap answers from the field of metaphysics", since metaphysics is as bogus a field of human inquiry as theology.

Posted by: cricket Sep 30 6:32 PM

I would like to point out with respect that . J.C. has misinterpreted my letter. I nowhere stated that evolution is (necessarily) a matter of chance. As a matter of fact I conceded, arguendo, that evolution may proceed to its end via the very pathways that Dawkins suggests in his book. Further implied in my note is that even though evolutionary theories say nothing as to the origin of life, I might even allow that it may in future be discovered to have begun in a series of naturalistic processes as well. It remains that an intelligible universe in which even the tiniest particle has meaning (think about the word "meaning"), and the aggregate of which even such an atheist as W.E. refers to agreeably as a "symphony", can only have come about in the first instance either through mere chance or through some outside Agent, and only the latter actually "accounts" (in my letter, I chose that word quite categorically) for it. To stubbornly insist it is rather the former thus takes great faith. None of W.E.'s "carefully researched" science can lead to this conclusion, nor can it be reached by philosophy. Hence it is irrational--though please note I do not use "irrational" as a term of disparagement but merely descriptively.

Having written, I see now . J.C. has posted a second response. I wish we could find a way to discuss this that didn't involve the delay imposed by "comment moderation". I will try to answer him later.

Meanwhile, May God Bless J.C. and W.E. both.

Posted by: Darsh Sep 30 7:01 PM

Thank you cricket for standing up for our Creator, Odin! It's obvious to us that the world was created by the powerful Odin, and we all hear His wonderous orchestra of swords and shields on the battlefield!

May Odin rain many blessings on you and your family, cricket, and allow you to reap the rewards of many battles to come!

Posted by: J.C. Sep 30 7:28 PM

cricket: In your original letter you disparage those who believe that "godless chance accounts for not only the existence of both life itself but of ends and purpose in life's rich garden." I assumed you were referring to evolution in the last part of that sentence and suggesting that evolutionary theory means believing that everything that currently exists came about through accident. If you didn't mean that I apologize, but surely I wasn't the only one who had difficulty with your phrasing.

At present, we cannot tell what took place at the beginning of time, although Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" provides some tantalizing conjectures about the period starting about five seconds after. But to say that only God "accounts" for all that we see around us is to say, with all due respect, precisely nothing. We are once more back to the most easily refuted of all theological arguments: the argument from design. I won't bore readers by going over what so many philosophers have said about this "proof" over the last 400 years, but if anyone wants to examine this argument more closely they need only purchase a copy of Hitchens' "God Is Not Great."

Anyway, I have to go since I am a bit late performing my daily rituals for the gods Zeus and Hera.

Posted by:W.E. Oct 1 8:14 AM

Nothing quite electrifies the 'soul' as spirited debate! Such arguments do always tend to reel and do-se-do, however, because two different languages are being spoken. If belief in any ‘god’ were approached from a purely scientific position, it would have been discarded as nonsense two centuries ago. Religion, of course, places itself beyond scientific proof. Theists have been brainwashed since childhood to simply accept that their bibles / korans / whatever, are simply, unquestionably 'true'. Faith dictates that the words of the gods cannot be disproven. This ensures that there are very few people who will be swayed from their beliefs, even when (from a scientific perspective) such beliefs should be in the same corner of the history books as tarot cards and astrology. If we remove blind faith from the equation, the argument for religion cannot even stand up on the moral / philosophical level (as more eloquent men than I have demonstrated!) As a young teen, I recall asking myself a simple question : The god of the bible is an active god. He DOES things. His reported actions in, for example, helping Moses' tribe escape from Egypt are very 'hands on'. The question remains ... Where was he at Auschwitz? Were the Jews of Moses' time more important? I would have given my life to save even one child from the Holocaust. Why hadn't this super-magical god lifted a finger to help a million children? Am I morally better than god? Heaven forbid!

Posted by:rt Oct 1 9:01 AM

Clueless. {cricket's note: I think he means me but I'm not sure because rt was commenting on another letter as well}

Posted by: cricket Oct 12:45 PM

So much to say, so few "characters left".
Re J.C.@5:51
1) With respect, I have no eggs in the intelligent design or anti-evolution basket so you're wasting your own "characters left" swatting at it.
2) The evidence is the music that is reality in many thousands of ways we can draw out for days. My tone-deafness theory still stands.
3) Metaphysics may be bogus as you say but unfortunately whenever we look out on the world in wonder we bump our heads against metaphysical questions. Unfortunately whenever we make a moral decision it is fraught with metaphysical assumptions as well. "How does the world work" is a scientific question, but "how is it that the world works" is a metaphysical. In the end, though, if metaphysics is bunk you cannot say, "God does not exist," for that is a conclusion in the very field you deny. You CAN say, "I just don't know if God exists--maybe he does; maybe not." But then you might be forced to examine the claims of people who met a man who said he was God, was crucified, died and (they say) rose from the dead--people who then strangely died martyrs' deaths rather than just admit they were lying or mistaken about him.

Re Darsh@7:01
I would thank you if I didn't strongly suspect you're simply being sarcastic at my expense. However, if you think there's a good argument in juxtaposing God with Odin, it can only be (and, please, I have no desire to offend you) that you've not gone beyond a child's understanding of God as big bearded man in the sky.

Posted by:cricket Oct 1 1:10 PM

Re J.C.@7:28
1) The source of your difficulty may be that you have written “but” where I wrote “and”. The “but”, and hence the real focus, comes after the passage you quoted. Secondly, I did not mean to “disparage” anyone, only to point out that their position is one of faith not of reason.
2) Bryson’s conjectures may provide valuable insight into how meaning was infused into the universe sometime before 5 seconds (a very long time in Creation), but they cannot say why, and the assumption that there exists meaning with no one to have meant it remains an assumption of faith.
3) It is not so much from design that I am arguing but from reality. You are correct that philosophers have refuted Aquinas’ five proofs beginning with their own assumptions (and those taken on faith), however continued drawing out of their arguments has resulted in their leading by modern times inexorably to nihilism and Nietzschean ethics—a denial of reality itself and of truth including moral truth. These may be reasonable positions but they are counter-intuitive given the reality in which we presume to live our day-to-day lives. For example, they're really not the positions I want the guy dating my daughter to live by.
4) Hitchens’ invective against religious people is beneath contempt and his arguments puerile.

Posted by: J.C. Oct 1 2:02 PM

cricket: I appear to have touched a nerve.

1. Thank you drawing attention to my error regarding "but" and "and". This is, however, a distinction without a difference. Even with "and", your phrasing is highly ambiguous.

2. You try to collapse the difference between scientific and religious attitudes by claiming that both depend on faith. This gambit has been tried many times before, and it is as wanting now as it was then. Scientists - and atheists - believe in the principle of falsifiability. In other words, if compelling evidence forces them to reconsider their views they will do so. You claim that "the music that is reality in many thousands of ways" constitutes that evidence. I'm sorry for having to beat a dead horse, but this is the same tired argument from design I alluded to in my last post. At the very least, you have to admit that many intelligent people do not accept "the music of reality" as proof of a deity, and to accuse these people of being "tone deaf" adds insult to injury.

3. Atheists are not nihilists, and it is outrageous to say so.

4. It isn't enough for you to argue for the existence of a deity; you argue that a specific man was God. And the "evidence"? His followers died because of that claim. Oh, my.

5. Your swipe at Darsh is unfair, since there is no more evidence for Jehovah than there is for Odin.

6. Spare me the ad hominems. Instead of referring to Hitchens as "puerile", perhaps you could address his arguments.

Posted by:cricket Oct 1 3:30 PM

Re W.E.@8:14
I don't have time to answer all your points, W.E. and this will be my last comment here. We can continue at my own blog if you like. I'm sure you can find it.
1) It is not that religion places itself beyond scientific proof but rather that it is by its nature beyond scientific proof (just as the claims of atheism are) since it concerns the supernatural and science is only concerned with nature. However religion is subject to the demands of reason insofar as its claims touch on the physical world.
2)Your reference to the Jewish Shoah of the 20th century is fortuitous. If there is no God, then morality is just a combination of epiphenomena of our evolutionary processes and a social construction. The result is you really have no solid moral ground on which to criticize me if I want to kick a dog downstairs, rape a small child, or exterminate the Jews of Europe. You can explain why YOU think I ought not to do these things, but descriptive explanations hold no moral force. I, on the other hand, believe that moral truths are real and the Nazis did real evil. Whether God was at Auschwitz, I don't know, but you can only say he wasn't if you happen to know that none of its victims is now in Heaven enjoying hyper-blessings infinitely beyond any such suffering. Neither of us can say that.

Anyway, thank you and God bless you all and Godwin's law which ends this for me.

I didn't answer J.C.'s last note over there, so in fairness I won't answer it here either, unless he should happen along and wish to continue the debate.

My letter to the Free Press on this Dawkins' book review...

2009-09-28T11:22:00.005-05:00

...if you'll forgive a little self-repetition:

Dawkins and his apologists, in this case Ted St. Godard, tilt at straw windmills in their attacks on young earth creationists. Earth may well be billions of years old; evolutionary theory may well correctly describe the paths of the speciation of life just as Dawkins elicits. However, it remains that to hold that godless chance accounts for not only the existence both of life itself and of ends and purpose manifest in life’s rich garden, but indeed the origins of true intelligibility in the universe right from the tiniest quark, requires a steadfast faith every bit as irrational as that of any Bible-thumping fundamentalist. It remains that all creation animate and inanimate veritably sings its Creator for any with ears. Atheists Dawkins and St. Godard must insist implausibly that theists—the vast majority of humankind—are all stupid or insane. We need only maintain that ~~they~~ the atheists are tone deaf.

Update. It was pointed out that the "they" in the last sentence is ambiguous.

¿Habla ingles?

2009-09-23T15:59:00.004-05:00

Like my friend the angler, who finds that eating a stack of garlic and anchovy sandwiches before fishing somehow draws entire schools to congregate around his boat, Fatah wait[s] with baited breath to see Layton convert.

Protestant Biblical Exegesis

2009-09-16T16:25:00.004-05:00

I joke with my Protestant friends that their number one rule of Biblical exegesis is:

Given that the Catholic Church is wrong about the issue in question, what is a plausible alternate reading of the passage in question?

I joke as I say yet I've yet to see them deviate from it.

Scorn?

2009-09-09T14:35:00.005-05:00

Moderns believe pity and scorn are two sides of a penny if not precisely the same thing. They are quite wrong and astoundingly so in some cases.

Here's an FLA I once wrote

2009-09-03T12:24:00.005-05:00

... to try to explain to a Protestant about grace and merit, indulgences and communion of saints. If this blog had readers, I would hope one would tell me if it is fatuous to the point of embarrassment.

Suppose you love your young son one bright day and make a plan to show him that love. So, you promise to buy him a bicycle that happens to be worth, say, $300—quite a lot of money, though you don’t tell him that. All you ask is that he be a good boy and behave himself. You plan to pick it up for him on Friday (payday) though he has done nothing to deserve it particularly. But all his past less-than-perfect behavior is forgotten. Suppose then, on Wednesday, he misbehaves and breaks a valuable lamp as a direct result. You are no longer so inclined to buy the bike for him, and he runs weeping to his room. However, on Thursday, he comes to you, contrite as the day is long. He quite seriously offers to pay for the lamp (which you know he could not possibly afford to do) and to forgo the bike. Convinced that his repentance is true, your heart rekindles and you offer him a deal. If he will clean his room every Friday for a month (Is it a job you’d value at anywhere close to $300? Not even thirty), then you will buy him the bike anyway. He accepts and gives his word. Next day, out of your paycheck, you lay out $200 for a new lamp yourself. Now suppose the boy, true to his word, maintains exemplary behavior for the month and also does a tip-top job (for his age) of cleaning his room on each of the next three Fridays. (On the third Friday, his younger brother, caught up in the excitement, helps him). On the day before the final Friday (payday, again), smiling indulgently, you tell him to go give his Mother a big hug and kiss in lieu of cleaning his room the following day. He does so, positively beaming, and the next day you bring home the shiny new Schwinn. After all, you tell yourself, he earned it.

We have found the world's greatest master--of understatement

2009-08-27T16:22:00.004-05:00

Excerpted from our news item:

President Medvedev of Russia was hailed as a goddess during an official visit to a Buddhist monastery in eastern Siberia.

During the first trip in 16 years to the remote Ivolginsky monastery in Buryatia by a head of state, he was shown a statue of the White Tara, a seven-eyed, female figure in the Buddhist pantheon, whose embodiment he is believed to be, it was reported.

The spiritual leader of the monastery, Pandito Khambo Lama Damba Ayusheyev, said when asked about the president’s spiritual significance: “It’s very hard to understand this for non-Buddhists and even for some Buddhists too.”

Bid for a spot in the new Hymnal.

2009-08-27T11:47:00.004-05:00

WHEREAS I have it from a reliable source that in parish churches all across the fruited plain, men and women are gathering together and resurrecting the stirring old hymn "Faith of Our Fathers," except now, after the first verse in the interest of familial harmony adding a second heretofore unwarbled stanza beginning "Faith of Our Mothers...", and a third a bird told me beginning "Faith of our Sisters and Brothers too...":

It is with soaring hopes and great confidence of getting a footnote in the next USCCB or CCCB approved hymnal I submit hereby for the approval of the sensus fidei my proposal for the new fourth verse:

Faith of my uncle, hangin' still,
In spite of drunken pranks that linger,
O how my heart beat high with joy,
Whene'er I pulled that glorious finger!

Getting serious for a moment: an important PSA.

2009-08-26T10:16:00.006-05:00

Make no mistake: the odd ice-cream headache is almost certainly nothing to worry about. But too many people continue to eat ice cream too quickly suffering recurring ice-cream headaches unaware that they could be signs of a more serious ice-cream malady: ice-cream meningitis perhaps or, more seriously, an ice-cream aneurism; even ice-cream cancer.

My great-uncle--never a sick day in his life--dropped dead at 81 from an ice-cream stroke at the TCBY.

.

Another letter to an atheist

2009-08-21T16:34:00.005-05:00

Commenting on the outcry from Christians over some recent end-of-life cases in which the question of euthanasia arose, my atheist friend puzzles at:

...this fervor com[ing] from one who professes to believe in life-after-death. If there really is life after death (eternal life, in fact), why is it important to prolong the suffering career of the cancer-ridden body in this fallen world? To put it another way: atheists, who believe that this earthly life is the only life there is, might be forgiven for clinging to it at all costs. Yet, oddly enough, atheists are generally OK with euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, while it's the supposedly religious people who are the clingers.

I think he asks a good question. At its most stark it is for Catholics (and any who believes in sacramental Baptism): why don't you just douse the forehead then slit the throat avoiding for him so fortunate a vale of tears in favor of immediate beatific bliss and everlasting. But this is to take the atheist's barren world view as our own—albeit with a little heaven tacked on the end—discounting, among many other blandishments of a life of grace, the uplifting dynamic of an ongoing community of man whence rises a Communion of Saints—the reason why any man's death diminished, say, Donne (as he seems to have thought).

To shed the light of a mere burning match on the Christian's strange position we look first at the atheist's, his perfectly reasonable attitude based on two conceits on his part. The first is the idea that he can at a moment in time effectively plot the arc of his future existence and determine whether its integral is positive or negative. It is highly questionable a notion at each step, not the least insoluble term being how to calibrate existential nothingness at our worldly zero. The second, implicit in the first, is the tenet that suffering is always of negative value and this second notion is simply—certainly in terms of the person whose God came to earth to suffer, but also empirically, if we are honest—an error.

Of course I'm talking about an idealized atheist, and when we turn back to the Christians in these news stories the problem of explaining their behavior when facing death is made many times more difficult by the fact that they (and we) are none of them (or us) ideal Christians but are by and large as infected as anyone by the spirit of the post-Christian age in which we are immersed; an age in which peculiarly the ontological if not the eschatological assumptions of the atheist hold sway, but animated by a spirit not at all unlike that which in all ages gains its purchase in original sin. In short, our motives are mixed and when any one does cling to life at all costs (especially at the cost of others’ lives), he does evil. But anyone may fear death as your less-than-ideal atheist also does along with the imperfect Christian, and it is only in folly that the pure and shining, the fearless atheist specimen looks down on such a ragged and craven Christian, scoffing that for the Christian death is—or need be—but a play-acting scene (say, I’ll just lie down here and close my eyes till the end of Act II, then we’ll all go to the wrap party and have a real good time).

This is false. Death, we know well, is the radical disintegration of the body and from it its form the soul. It entails real and utter surrender of oneself to a blackness, perhaps to forgetfulness, and no one knows, beyond an obscure and remote promise, what for himself lies beyond it—even more: what strange and fiery form the self itself may take—and that is a fearful thing. Indeed, the Christian must acknowledge that, again for him, it might be much worse than oblivion. But it must be just so else the Christian concede all love and sacrifice and all hope and thanksgiving are but play-acting exercises as well (say, I’ll just {wink} deposit my pocket change here with this beggar assured that later on I can withdraw it in golden flag—with interest).

Further, it must be remembered that for us death is the novelty, the unnatural thing we were not designed for but rather a punishment for our sins, itself symbolizing, even aping the end of our self willed separation from God. In that, but for Christ's sweet promise, death is an enemy forsooth to be hated and feared. But to unite ourselves truly to that promise and extract all its sweetness requires from us the real love that lies in self-sacrifice so profound that it is to our fallen natures like death before death, and so again, poor Christians, we poor Christians are afraid.

But Christian is the word not so much for what we are but for what we aspire to be, so while one may well fairly judge Christians harshly as lacking the courage of their convictions (though he must grant they are not easy convictions to live up to), better judge Christianity on its own terms. The true Christian view of death begins with Christ. The saints recall His seven last words with great reverence and close attention and are moved to face their own death with the equanimity of St Stephen who begged for the lives only of his executioners. In a modern hospital setting our example is St Gianna Molla. She was no clinger. If the difference between them and us is the Hope born of a plenitude of Grace—which Grace engenders also a more perfect Love—then surely these saints both of unconquerable courage and of a Love most potently expressed in mercy will be in favor of assisted suicide?

Of course the answer, finally, is no, for the saint rejects not only the first two assumptions of the suicide enthusiast, but also even more profoundly the third error of the atheist—the presumption that one can own a life (either ones own in the case of suicide or that of another in the case of euthanasia). To frame it thus is to recognize the hollowness of the question, If there really is life after death, why is it important to prolong the suffering career of the cancer-ridden body in this fallen world? for to equate on one hand doing all we can to alleviate the physical and psychological suffering of the dying—short of stealing something literally of inestimable value and disposing of it as literally worth less than nothing—with, on the other, purposely prolonging (what we arrogantly suppose to be: needless) suffering, is to embrace wholesale all three of the atheist’s errors—that he knows what life and death are (and they are reductive), that he understands suffering (and it is uniformly negative) and that it’s his choice to make (with or without good data). The first two are manifestly false to anyone on a moment’s reflection. While the error in the third may only be grasped by a certain type of theist, the ends of its implications in all facets of life will be dire. But that is a whole other discussion.

I've said this before

2009-08-21T15:21:00.004-05:00

... but I wanted to write it here for the record.

For the materialist atheist, the most honorable life is the career of a religious huckster and the most sublime death is suicide

If I had readers I would invite their critiques of this formulation.

Brendon at Respondeo dicendum attempts to debunk the claim that...

2009-07-20T17:36:00.004-05:00

...incredible claims require incredible evidence.

But who actually says, "incredible claims require incredible evidence?" It makes no sense. Incredible claims certainly require credible evidence, while credible claims as far as they require evidence at all must also rely on credible evidence. Incredible evidence can even cast doubt on credible claims to say nothing of incredible claims.

I have heard that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This makes a certain amount of sense. For example a person making the claim that God does not exist would be required to furnish credible evidence, yes, but extraordinary evidence also. Indeed: if there were ordinary (credible) evidence that God does not exist the matter would already have been disposed of.

My letter to the Free Press.

2009-06-17T13:21:00.001-05:00

If supporters of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights are having qualms about building over hypothetical ancient graves they should be many times more deeply ashamed building it on the graves of the very real 100,000 aborted children per year. The notion of any such thing as human rights in Canada is only a sad joke until the humanity of the innocent unborn is addressed.

Aren't we going to have five months left over?

2009-06-15T11:39:00.006-05:00

In a Monday proclamation, President Barack Obama declared June 2009
to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

I'd like to suggest, to give the rest of us a bit of a break, that the next two warm summer months be declared LGBT Sloth Month and LGBT Gluttony Month. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to LGBT Wrath Month to say nothing of LGBT Lust Month

Volver (2006)

2009-06-10T11:40:00.001-05:00

Volver (Returning(?)) is an interesting film by director Pedro Almodóvar starring Penelope Cruz as Raimunda a sister, a mother, a niece, a would-be restaurateur and the daughter of a mischievous ghost. Perhaps I didn't "read" the (Spanish-language) film properly, but the early action in the film coupled with the prevalent theme of returning (from the dead) seemed to promise the viewer a tragic denouement, even as the film's wry humor quite endearingly balances out its darker themes of death, rape and insanity. But when one minor character stubbornly remains quite frozen, the circle is broken and the promise fizzles. I would have given three stars, but I bumped it to four based solely on Raimunda's climactic performance in the restaurant of the title song. The voice double is Estrella Morente: be sure to listen to this longer version in HQ.

A post at Via Media reminded me of this.

2009-06-08T16:03:00.004-05:00

The first Buddhist Monk I ever saw close up—it was years ago—was asleep in a departure lounge in the Dorval Airport (now the Trudeau) in Montréal. He was a large man and larger than life in his vivid orange robes; but what my wife and I really noticed was his shoes: a simply beautiful pair of brown brogues that shone like the sun. They must have cost him at least $300—perhaps much more, I dunno—at a time when I had never spent more than fifty bucks for a pair of shoes. They were too stunning even to provoke envy—or worse: some ugly self-righteous attitude of superiority over the seeming extravagance of such a purchase by one who ostensibly seeks detachment—just deep admiration.

Last surviving passenger of Titanic dies anyway,

2009-06-04T11:23:00.002-05:00

making all the hundreds of dollars and dozens of man-hours spent in the rescue effort ultimately pointless.

It was the third of June.

2009-06-03T14:21:00.011-05:00

{knock knock}
"Why, Billie Joe, I do declare. Come on in. Take a chair.... Uh... How are you?"
"Very well, thanks--though from its tone your quaery would appear to be other than a mere social pleasantry seeming--as it does to me--to be fraught with an unwonted concern I might be otherwise. Hmm?"
"Well, uh, since you ask, er, um... I had heard incidentally that you had, that is to say you may have... I might say, flung--yourself from--from the bridge... the uh..."
"the...?"
"yes, the Tallahatchie Bridge... you're smiling. Why?"
"Ho, ho, ho. Indeed... Yes, I did plummet from a certain venerable edifice spanning that incongruously named body of water-- directly into said body of water, I might add. Indeed, as I say, into the deepest part. Though, I must say, not deep enough to save my feet to the ankle from being plunged into the cool muck on the bottom... albeit to my great delight."
"But... then... your suici--"
"Greatly exaggerated, yes. Gosh, the Tallahatchie bridge is not exactly Mississippi's Golden Gate. It can't be six meters from deck to water's surface. Honestly. It was a lark"
"Ah. Of course. But then, you never did have a lick o sense, Billie Joe McAllister. Have some cake?"
"{Roaring} Ho, ho, ho, ho. Guilty as charged, my friend. And yes, indeed. I don't mind if I do."

{later}

"Um, it's just that, you know, after our throwing that thing off the bridge... you know, the..."
"Ah. I had forgotten about that. Yes, I can see now why you might have been concerned, and for that I certainly do apologize."

That time of the year, again.

2009-04-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

Bless me Father (and by the way, Father, thanks for clearing all the boxes and exercise equipment out of the confessional--shame this comfy chair isn't used more often), for I have sinned. It is one year since my last confession. These are my sins. Um...
I prayed the rosary once during mass, and ... um... that's all I can think of, forgive me, Father.

Some medical advice.

2009-03-27T15:18:00.001-05:00

Next time you're sore all over as a result of repeated irrational attacks of overwhelming terror AND you're hankering for the marvelous taste sensation of warm maple syrup, just fix yourself some panic-aches.

You won't regret it.

Celery Soup.

2009-03-26T15:11:00.006-05:00

Wednesday:

An onion and lots of celery chopped fine, sautéed in olive oil. Added S&P, ½ tsp of ground thyme and a dash nutmeg. Simmered for an hour and a half with a stock from the carcass of Sunday's roast chicken. Puréed. Served with more S&P and a dollop of heavy cream.

If it isn't good, I'll tell you.

Some more ornithological little known facts

2009-03-25T15:30:00.000-05:00

Birds have to breathe very quickly and in copious amounts to produce enough energy for flight. That is why when ever they start on a journey their friends tell them, "Beak Airful."