Is it, indeed, so difficult to love Him Who is infinitely lovable
and infinitely loving? The love that He asks of us is nothing extraordinary;
it is the devotedness of love — the gift of oneself — consisting chiefly
in conformity to the divine will. To want to love is to love. To keep the
commandments for God’s sake is to love. To pray is to love. To fulfill our
duties of state in view of pleasing God, this is likewise to love. Nay more,
to recreate ourselves, to take our meals with the like intention is to love.
To serve our neighbor for God’s sake is to love. Nothing then is easier, God’s
grace helping, than the constant exercise of divine love and through this, steady
advance toward perfection.
— Chapter 3, No. 350
Because God is not wholly alien to human thought and freedom, therefore the
freedom of Christ can find its authentic fulfillment, perfection, and beauty in
being utterly relative to God, that is to say, in knowing and doing the will of
the Father. Through the medium of his human reason illumined by grace, Christ as
man has knowledge of his own divine will that he shares with the Father, and this
in turn renders him humanly free to do the divine will. Were there an absolute
ontological dissimilitude between the human nature of Christ and divine nature,
there would simply be no possibility of a cooperation of the human will of
Christ with the divine will, as the revelation of the will of the Father would
remain wholly alien and unintelligible to Christ’s human nature, even in the
presence of divine grace. In point of fact, however, Christ’s human knowledge of
his own deity deepens his human freedom by augmenting his human potential to
love and to choose what is authentically good with freedom. In this way it is
the source of the unique freedom of Christ.
— Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord
This book was a bit of slow going at first - the initial parts of it respond to
to other works of theology that I only know by name, though it didn’t take look
to suss out the main ideas by way of White’s sed contras. I haven’t had to
read that carefully and slowly in a long time, and I can see returning to this
frequently in the future.
Why study Christology? Well, if we believe that God became Man, it’s very much
worthwhile thinking through that teaches us about Him, especially as regards His
death and resurrection. White shows how to bring to bear the theology of Thomas
Aquinas to bear on some of the modern lines of thought about Christ, resolving
some of the issues that have clouded an already demanding topic. At best, this
cloudiness results in confusion; at worst, thoughts which slowly edge
in the direction of Nestorianism or even Gnosticism. For my part, the sections
on Holy Saturday cleared away some confusion I’ve had since trying to tackle
Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale (which he engages directly). Strangely enough,
the descent into hell is something we gloss right over in the creeds but gets
called out frequently by adults in our RCIA classes. Wait, what does THAT mean?
He descended into hell? They’ve never heard it before, which surprises me.
For many years, I have been contending with a call to the vocation of deacon,
and stepped into a focused period of discernment about eighteen months ago. That
process has continued, and I’ve entered into a sort of formal process for
continued discernment, both on my part and the part of the church. Long
conversations with the director of vocations, and the first of many extensive
questionnaires. This have encouraged a great deal of meditation and continued
prayer on my part. The formation period is extensive and rigorous: four years of
study, with coursework completed in parallel for the completion of a masters
degree in theology. This in addition to my existing responsibilities: husband,
father, and employee. I trust that with the grace of God I will be be led
through this process, or perhaps out of it completely. I have but to surrender,
you see, confident that He will not take me anywhere that I can’t contend
without His grace. Lead Thou me on indeed.
As for reading…well, when you ask the director of vocations for reading
suggestions, you’re going to get recommendations on a whole new level. My
reading for foreseeable future is going to consist of The Incarnate Christ: A
Thomistic Study in Christology by Thomas Joseph White, OP and The Spiritual
Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology by The Very Reverend
Adolphe Tanquerey, S.S.D.D. The first author is described as “a stud” by
Father, and the first few pages are certainly studly. He said that the Tanquerey
book took him the better part of a year. Like I said: a whole other level.
Luckily I have some business travel starting shortly, so there’ll be some flight
time and hotel evenings to fill.
Update: after a four-hour late-night flight, I’m about 150 pages in. There is
lots here to unpack. I’ve certainly read more about the hypostatic union than I
have in my life to date.
I’ve also tossed Making Small Groups Work into my bag. There seems to be quite
a bit of interest in small groups at our church (for a variety of interests, by
a variety of groups).
Maturity comes only when confronting what has to be confronted within
ourselves. This is where the vows relate, and illuminate each other. For
stability means that I must not run away from where my battles are being fought,
that I have to stand still where the real issues have to be faced. Obedience
compels me to re-enact in my own life that submission of Christ himself, even
though it may lead to suffering and to death. And conversatio, openness, means
that I must be ready to pick myself up, and start all over again in a pattern of
growth which will not end until the day of my final dying. And all the time the
journey is based on that Gospel paradox of losing life and finding it. An
anxious attitude with my personal and spiritual growth is disastrous. The goal
of my changing life is not self-fulfilment, even though so much of the personal
growth movement popular today seems to suggest that that is so. St Benedict is
quite ruthless about the sort of self-fulfilment which is self-seeking. My goal
is Christ.
– Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict
He must increase; I must decrease. You wish to serve - very well then. What if
it is His will that you serve by waiting? By turning silence into a joyful
communion of thanks and praise? Perhaps this is all there is, and all there will
ever be. Or not. But here, now, in this moment, surrounded by these people - how
will I conform myself to Him? Elsewhere, de Waal quotes Metropolitan Bloom, to
the effect that if I cannot find Him here and now, I will not find Him anwhere,
perhaps not even in the Temple. Am I growing in holiness? Or erecting roadblocks
based on the way I think things ought to be?
Our technologies have specific ends to which they are ordered. What are they?
Are there multiple ends? Those ends for which we use them, but a deeper (or
higher?) level, their actual ends, as intended by their creators?
Technology doesn’t exist for its own sake. As there was a creator, there is also
a telos.
In the sphere of unlimited, instantaneous global communication and attention,
how have our views of ourselves (and by extension, others) been changed for the
better or worse? How does the TOB inform this thinking? I’m thinking in
particular of authentic, in-person communications and our relationships with
enfleshed others.
What if Alison Parrish’s thoughts on a new hacker ethic were to obtain
completely? What if they were reinforced by the thoughts in Weapons of Math
Destruction, in particular, the growing recognition that humans are not nearly
as good at algorithms as we think we are? And that this recognition may not be
keeping pace with their widespread implementation? And that this widespread
implementation has real, grave impacts? If fully internalized by technicians,
how would the technology landscape be different?
If we count the cost, who pays the steepest prices? What does a preferential
option for the poor look like in a globally connected world?
As the world prior to the Internet continues to recede, and the second generation to swim
completely in it grows up, what new criticism will be levied? As a cohort, where
will they stand fast?
When the thistle blooms and the chirping cicada
sits on trees and pours down shrill song
from frenziedly quivering wings in the toilsome summer
then goats are fatter than ever and wine is at its best
— Hesiod
We’re in that weird time of the year where the evenings are beautifully cool
and the days are still in the mid-90s. The insects and plants are not fooled.
Leaves are just starting to blush a little on some trees and the late summer
insects are on the move. Do you have phases of insects? We do. In spring, the
crane flies erupt from the grass in huge clouds and manage to find their way
into the house, grossing everyone out. Early summer is time for the Japanese
beetles. Midsummer, we get the June bugs: large buzzy emeralds that zoom around
just above the grass, driving the chickens crazy. About this time the cicadas
turn up - annuals every summer, periodic hordes on their own particular
schedule.
In late summer, we get the scolidae wasps: dark, blue-winged wasps that
zoom around over the grass looking for the larvae of the aforementioned
Japanese beetles. The wasps are thereby my immediate friends. They’re nice
looking, too: deep purple, almost black, with a cinnamon-tipped abdomen adorned
by two distinct yellow dots. They’re non-aggressive and spend most of their
time flying in large groups here and there over the grass, hunting the buried
grubs that will feed their young.
Late summer is also the time for praying mantises at their largest, stickbugs,
and butterflies all over the remaining zinnias and gomphrenas. The little
butterfly bush near the porch has hosted monarch caterpillars in years past but
I haven’t seen any this year. The pawpaw attracted tiger swallowtails to
lay their eggs, but I pulled the larvae off to give the tree another season or
two of growth before they make off with all the leaves.
Before much longer, the real heralds of fall will arrive: garden spiders and
other large orb-weavers will appear in the remains of the tomato plants or
in improbably big webs between trees. That’s when I know the party’s nearly over.
Until then, we still get the soft daytime hum of the field crickets and a cicada or
two. The hummingbirds are still fighting over the feeders and hopefully getting
fat for their big flight south. And the sky has turned that cobalt blue once
or twice. The afternoon light is a little redder, and the shadows are coming a
little sooner.
Then the quietude. The insects will be gone until spring and I’ll miss their
comings and goings, and especially their sounds. As for winter, I have plans for
a 3-chambered bat house hanging above my desk. I hope to site it in the farthest
part of our back yard, where it’s close enough to see but far enough away that
nothing ought to disturb any bats who happen to move in. I saw a bat house in
an urban garden recently end it was certainly full of bats. I figure if they can be
happy there, perhaps they can be happy here too.
As far as books go, I just finished Ovid’s Metamorphoses and I’m re-perusing
Joseph Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues while I try to figure out what to
read next.
TV-wise, we’re waiting for the return of The Expanse, Better Call Saul,
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Crown. The trailer for HBO’s Watchmen caught
my attention, too. Over a couple of nights this week, I watched the BBC/Amazon
production of King Lear and I thought it was great. I’ll never read it again
without seeing Anthony Hopkins, Jim Broadbent, and Emily Watson in my head.
We recently moved our oldest son into his university dorm, our first child to go
out of state and far away. Bittersweet, to be sure, though we had all been
quietly getting ready for it well in advance. The campus is small and intimate
and he’ll be walking into a ready-made community by way of his teammates. It’s
all very exciting.
I spent some time nosing around the campus bookstore and came upon Art Spiegelman’s
Maus, which has been on my to-read list for years. So I grabbed it - the
hardback definitive edition - and finished it in about 2 days.
Maus was every bit as good as I had expected. You’d think that a story as
amazing as this would be tempered slightly by the format - comic book? With mice
and cats? But no. If anything, it felt more focused to me. The drawing style
is spare and there are panels that will be me for awhile. The story is amazing
enough. Highly recommended, even if graphic novels aren’t usually your thing.
In the home-stretch of Daniélou’s From Shadows to Reality, a series
of studies in the main threads of early patristic typology. I have to
confess that the material is a bit drier than
I expected (if you can believe that). Much of it is “so-and-so wrote this,
so-and-so affirmed it, but so-and-so’s Homily on Foofooius draws from
Philo…” and again I’m not really sure what I was expecting. The book
is exactly as described on the cover: studies in the typology of the
fathers. I read one of his other books on sacramental typology (The
Bible and the Liturgy) and thought it was a bit more engaging. In any
case, I can see coming back to this for consultation now and again. It’s
a near-certainty to me that reliance on historical-critical exegesis
leaves something of a void that a return to the fathers can fill. From
the introduction:
Few things are more disconcerting for the modern man than the
Scriptural commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. On the one hand
there is a fullness, both theological and spiritual which gives them
a richness unequalled elsewhere. But at the same time modern man feels
a stranger to their outlook and they cut clean through his modes of
thought. Hence the depreciation, so common, of Patristic exegesis, which
in varying degrees is felt among so many of our contemporaries. We cannot
help feeling that this suspicion is due to the fact that, in all the works
of the Golden Age of the Fathers, we find side by side the most divergent
interpretations, in which good an dbad are inextricably mixed. The problem
is how to find one’s way in this new world. If Origen speaks of the
“vast forest of the Scriptures,” how much more true is this of the
luxuriant commentaries which have grown up around the Scriptures.
I just started the section on the Joshua cycle, and it looks a bit more
interesting. We’ll see.
In other news, we just started Chernobyl. I believe I’d watch a miniseries
of Jared Harris just working crossword puzzles and putzing around in his kitchen.
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift my glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
— Yeats, “A Drinking Song”
RCIA is ramping up again soon and I’ve been asked to take over/restart/reboot
the neophyte year. There’s not a whole lot support offered to new Catholics in
after the post-Pentacost mystagogy concludes and this needs to be rectified. I’m
simultaneously excited and a little nervous, but we’re meeting as a team in a
couple of weeks and I’ll hopefully get a bit of clarity. If not, well, Veni
Creator Spiritus.
Closing in on the end of the long long trip through Yugoslavia with Rebecca
West, her husband, and the odd couple, Constantin and Gerda. There’s nothing in
the on-deck circle at the moment. I’m glad to have read it and have learned a
fair bit about the Balkans, or at least West’s impressions, in the process.
It’s hot here. The hottest part of the year. The squash is done, the
cucumbers nearly so, and both are about to be replaced by beans. Tomatoes have
formed an impenetrable thicket. Only the peppers are standing tall. I have a few
experimentally drying in the garage. We’ll see how that goes. This morning I
skipped Lauds to get in an early morning run before the day got too hot. Then I
got back and my work day commenced immediately. So I felt great from the run,
but not great from laying aside prayer and meditation to do so. Not a mistake I
intend to repeat.
I’ve kicked Twitter to the curb for the most part. I deactivated my main
presence there and set up a new one which follows exactly 30 accounts in my
local area which focus on severe weather, emergency response, or public
information on the same. When bad weather rolls in (as it did last night and
will again this weekend), I’ll turn it on to read (and contribute) weather
spotting information as needed. The only other thing I was using it for was
DM’ing my brother, and we’ve since moved to SMS. To the curb, then. Or halfway
to the curb anyhow. The mobile app still has way too many sponsored posts. If
I’m sitting at my desk, though, I can use
oystyyer to keep an ad-free, 100% text
experience.
As for the rest: I’m trying (with variable success) to limit my Reddit intake to
the amateur radio-related sub(s). I switch between newsbeuter and liferea for
RSS feed-reading. I use Firefox as my main browser, and have installed uBlock
Origin and Privacy Badger. For many things, elinks still works fine. I also run
a pi-hole on our local network.
Much of this – including renewing subscriptions to the two (!) local newspapers
– has been part of a slowly growing focus on the local; that which is still
arguably within our ken. I was for a long time “engaged” with way too many
things. I know many people who still are, but can’t tell you what the city
council decided last night about the big road projects or annexations, both of
which have arguably more immediate impact on day-to-day life than a policy fight
in Washington. This goes equally for church politics, by the way. The latest
pronouncements in Rome are interesting and certainly deserving of attention, but
certainly not more attention than the goings-on at our local parish (or
diocese). This sounds like a suggestion for complete withdrawal from issues
beyond the county line. I’m not sure that’s possible, or even desirable.
Recalibrating how much attention is paid or calories burnt in response is
possible and worth a go.
And this is all very Benedictine - the focus on the particular people in the
particular place you find yourself. Even beyond the walls of the monastery, we
can strive for
stabilio.
In the face of the “engagement” colossus of the connected “social” world, we can’t
focus long enough on our own feet. The world longs to see us uprooted -
physically, mentally, spiritually.
I regret not keeping a pencil alongside while reading Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon; it’s chock full of great passages and now I have to scan for them. Last
night I read the following bit and resolved to post it as soon as possible.
The West’s guide, Constantine, has been telling them the story of a church in Bosnia that
contained the relics of Saint Luke. However there was another church, in Italy,
which also possessed the relics of Saint Luke. Moreover, the Italian relic
lacked a head, which was in the care of the Vatican, where the Bosnian Luke was
still intact. Yet a third church in Italy claimed to have an arm of Saint Luke
and had been using to effect miracles for some time. Constantine continues:
There is nobody today to whom that story would not seem absurd, except very
simple people, too simple people, idiots. Those who believe in the power of
relics and who are solemn will beg you not to talk of such things, not to recall
how the stupidities of our ancestors made foolish a beautiful thing. But most
people, whether they are believing or not, will only laugh. But the people of
five hundred years ago did not see anything ridiculous in a dead man with two
heads and three arms, all working miracles; and they did not feel suspicious
because many monks made much money out of such dead men. They saw something
else, which made them add a head and a head and make it one head, and two arms
and one arm, and make it two arms, and we do not know what that something was.
For me, I hate it when I read history and I see that now there is nothing where
once there was something. It shows me that man has been eating food which has
done him no good, which has passed out of him undigested.
I had laid aside Black Lamb to tackle The Conservative Sensibility by George
Will, which has just been published. On the whole I thought it was pretty good,
if a little repetitive in places. I liked his arguments about conservatism not
necessarily being contingent on religious faith, but could have done without the
cosmological rhapsodizing towards the end. Otherwise it was an interesting book
and certainly he made quite a few points worth consideration. By design, it’s
light on prescription. Much more of an extended think-piece/meditation. It’s
nice to return to Yugoslavia.
Catechetical training continues apace. The garden’s growing in and the weather’s
ramping into the usual summertime patterns. Things are, as usual, chaotic in our
household but the chaos is at its usual level and so a little easier to live
with.
I’m not quite a quarter of the way through Rebecca West’s monumental travelogue
of pre-World War II Yugoslavia. It’s wonderful stuff, and there’s seems to be a
quotable passage on just about every page. I started it while on a trip, which
seemed appropriate. Christopher Hitchens wrote the forward this edition, and
while I usually skip long introductions, this one was very much worth reading
and I’m glad I stuck through it. It’s easy to forget what a formidable writer he
was.
Things have been very busy around here lately - lots and lots of things
happening to fall on the onset of summer. Retreating into book and study has
been a blessed relief. The vegetable garden is off to a good start and I hope to
do a little antenna construction in another couple of weeks when (ho, ho) things
calm down a bit. Not sure what book(s) will be going into the on-deck circle.
I heard an interesting review the other day of the late Tony Horwitz’s Spying
on the South, and may add that. Just seems like a travelogue sort of season.
I’m also pursuing catechetical certification from our diocese, by way of
completing a series of online training modules. I recently completed the first
lesson of the first module and can now use homoosious correctly in a sentence.
Speaking of mysteries, I’ve been in pursuit of a minor one concerning some
utility lines which cross our property. We live on about 5 acres of land and
there are a couple of old poles carrying lines on to (and off of) the property
into parts unknown. Vines are beginning to completely consume one pole and I was
a little hesitant about cutting them myself, owing to a profound respect for
high voltage. My wife suggested we ask the local power company to take care of
it so we called them and they sent a man out. He looked at the poles and
declared two things. First, the lines were almost certainly not carrying power.
Second, they did not belong to our local utility. I called our county planning
office, and they sent me to the register of deeds, who in turn suggested I come
by to look through property records. Someone along the line would have granted
an easement to someone else for the poles and I’d need to find the transaction
by hand.
On a whim (well not quite a whim - the local utility guy suggested it), I
contacted the TVA and they responded nearly immediately. The easement was
theirs, and they moreover sent me an image of a document dating from 1920
showing the transaction, signed by the person who owned all this land at the
time. Now I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I am tempted to petition the TVA to
abandon the easement, or the piece of it that crosses my yard at the very
least. On the other hand, disappearing back into obscurity also has its appeal
and the last thing I want to do is stir up some big institutional machine into
deciding that, hey, this easement is actually pretty cool and we were just
thinking about re-energizing everything along there. In any case, a couple of
semi-abandoned poles have some interesting HAM RADIO potential, as long as no
one’s going to throw a switch at some point in the future.
From a place of profound respect, Rabbi Jacob Neusner tells the story of an
encounter with Jesus, of hearing the Sermon on the Mount, and turning over these
new teachings on the Torah in his mind. In his book, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus,
Neusner explores the places where the teachings of Christ shed brilliant light
on the Law of Moses and carefully considers those things where, in the context
of the Law, the two part ways. The terms are set very clearly at the outset: in no way
is this a polemic against Christianity, and less still should it be read as
Jewish proselytizing (if in fact there could be such a thing).
A few impressions, then, having completed it and in no particular order:
I thought the Rabbi makes an excellent case for his final conclusion - that in
the context of the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount would have been insufficient
for him to turn away from everything to follow Him. They part on friendly terms
after several conversations and much meditation on the part of the listener. The
imagined encounter brought to life the larger numbers of people in the crowds
who heard Him teaching - many must have struggled similarly. And yet, even so,
many did, in fact, choose to follow, even as the words of Jesus are made all the
more radical some places than I might have appreciated prior to this book. Chief
among these, Neusner points out, is the cosmic shift between the teachings of
the Torah, which concern all of eternal Israel, and deeply personal nature of an
encounter with Christ, who speaks principally to the individual. Where the Rabbi
sees this as a departure from the eternal law and thus ultimately irreconcilable
with the notion of Israel as a nation, a Christian sees the Word made flesh
precisely to encounter humanity individually and concretely.
In the book, Neusner consults with a contemporary master of the Torah to answer
the question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”. The master responds with
an answer which traces through the prophets, from Moses to Habakkuk, who finally
comes to rest on But the righteous shall live through his faith.
“So,” the master says, “is this what the sage, Jesus, had to say?”
I: “Not exactly, but close.”
He: “What did he leave out?”
I: “Nothing.”
He: “Then what did he add?”
I: “Himself.”
He: “Oh.”
I: “‘But the righteous shall live by his faith.’ And what is that? ‘It has been
told you, man, what is good, and what the Lord demands from you, only to do
justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God.'”
He: “Would Jesus agree?”
I: “I think so.”
He: “Then why so troubled this evening?”
I: “Because I really believe there is a difference between ‘You shall be holy,
for I the Lord your God am holy and ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell all you
have and come, follow me.'”
He: “I guess then it really depends on who the ‘me’ is.”
I came across references to this book in Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict
XVI and recommend it to anyone who is at all interested in Christianity,
Judaism, the places where they two intersect, and most importantly, the places
where they must remain separate. This is a great book, and very much worth a
read.
A certain philosopher asked St. Anthony: Father, how can you be so happy when
you are deprived of the consolation of books? Anthony replied: My book, O
philosopher, is the nature of created things, and any time I want to read the
words of God, the book is before me.
Another:
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep
my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative
silence; and according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts:
now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his
hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why
not be totally changed into fire?
Both from The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the
Fourth Century, Thomas Merton (Trans.)
Having pruned my Twitter list back to what I consider the bare essentials
(namely: friends, other hams, a few religion writers, and local
groups/organizations/entities), I’ve been rediscovering the joy of RSS feeds. I
was a hardcore Google Reader user until its unfortunate demise, then switched to
Feedly. At some point I stopped using it, but my account was still there, so I
purged and rebuilt all the feeds and now check it about twice a day for news
updates and all the goings-on. It was a nice surprise that most of my favorite
sites still offer RSS feeds, though it occasionally took a little bit of
right-click+view-source to find them. Only two sites remain - Garden & Gun and
The Nashville Scene but I haven’t given up yet.
We had a perfectly lovely Easter weekend, and managed to make all of the
liturgies of the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. I
was privileged to sponsor a young woman who was confirmed and received her first
Holy Communion. It was wonderful to see such a large cohort, both candidates and
catechumens, received into the Church. Being involved with RCIA has been a
blessing these past few months such that I’ve decided to pursue catechetical
certification in our diocese. There’s an option for online learning that would
fit well with my schedule and I’m pretty sure I could complete
it well under the three allotted years.
I picked up Mysterium Paschale again over the weekend to revisit von
Balthasar’s exploration of Holy Saturday.
The more eloquently the Gospels describe the passion of the living Jesus, his
death and burial, the more striking is their entirely understandable silence
when it comes to the time in between his placing in the grave and the event of
the Resurrection. We are grateful to them for this. Death calls for this
silence, not only by reason of the mourning of the survivors but, even more,
because of what we know of the dwelling and condition of the dead. When we
ascribe to the dead forms of activity that are new and yet prolong those of
earth, we are not simply expressing our perplexity. We are also defending
ourselves against a stronger conviction which tells us that death is not a
partial event. It is a happening which affects the whole person, though not
necessarily to the point of obliterating the human subject altogether. It is a
situation which signifies in the first place the abandonment of all spontaneous
activity and so a passivity, a state in which, perhaps, the vital activity now
brought to its end is mysteriously summed up.
It is in death, as the introduction to this book points out, that we find
Christ’s most radical solidarity with us. Even so, it feels like Holy Saturday
almost gets lost in the shuffle. One moment we’re celebrating the institution of
the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. The next night we’re revisiting His Passion and
venerating the wood of the cross. Saturday comes and all eyes look to the west
and the setting sun which marks the beginning of the Easter Vigil. We might
pause on Saturday morning to feel the stillness of the earth in the pause
between pauses. Everything holds its breath waiting for death itself to start
working backwards, as Aslan explained to the children.
On the strength of Alan Jacobs'
recommendation, I’m adding Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon by Rebecca West to the book pile. He mentioned it again recently in a
blog post, too.
Finally, a random nit: I wish authors would provide translations of
foreign-language quotes in the footnotes. But, comes the response, the intended
audience of this book will certainly be fluent in patristic Greek. But since the
author already knows what it means, why not throw a crib into the notes? And if
not the author, then perhaps the editor? Google Translate isn’t bad most of the
time but I’m damned if I even get the gist of an eis hadou katiēi, sunkatelthe,
gnōthi kai ta ekeise tou Christou mystēria, which is auto-translated as
“if he walks in a bowl, he is conscious, knowing, and consuming the mysteries of
Christ.”
“If he walks in a bowl” has me scratching my head a bit for sure.
Twitter has pretty much been my only social media presence for some time now,
though I consume way more than I contribute. I tend to follow three groups of
accounts:
Friends (including other hams) and people/organizations that are locally
rooted in my city, county, and state. This is my main feed and numbers about
200 different accounts.
A list of news organizations called “breaking,” which I usually turn on when
Something Big is going on.
A list of religion writers/leaders from across the spectrum: Catholic,
Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim.
I used to have a list strictly dedicated to industry-related things but got tired of
the infighting and ego-stroking. I dropped Facebook some time ago. I do have an
Instagram account, but only follow family members. So, to be fair, it’s not like
a had a large social footprint to start with. Even so, laying Twitter aside for
several weeks has had an interesting effect. Without putting too fine a point on
it: I can think longer and more clearly about things. I dipped back into the
religion list for a little while the other day and couldn’t shut it down fast
enough and, mind you, it’s not as though there’s much in the way of acrimony.
It’s just so much. So after Lent, I’ve decided to pare back my usage to my
main timeline and boot the other lists. If Something Big happens, I will
certainly find out about it via other means. My account will remain private and
I’ll probably continue using it in something of a read-only mode. The two
exceptions will be severe weather spotting (our local NWS office monitors for a
particular hashtag) and PM’ing my brother. That’s about it.
This
post at GetReligion really drove the point home for me, and not because I’m a pastor. I am not. I’ve concluded that while, yes, social media has done some good things it is on balance not a net good for us. Not personally, not at a community level. And certainly not as a media with an underlying profit motive that requires constant engagement via the constant stimulation of primal urges. Tmatt goes into more detail in his weekly column, which is also well worth reading
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Internet, mostly because it’s still possible for
me to use it the way I always have - as a means to an end rather than an end in
itself. It’s still imminently possible to research, learn, and communicate with
tools that let me control what I’m seeing and how much I share. It takes some
work, to be sure, and it ought not, but this is the way it is for now.
So books: still on Jesus of Nazareth. Finished up The Culture Code, which
was a little better than I expected. Not sure what I’ll go to next. Itching for
some fiction, but not sure what.
The Office of Readings today included a portion of a homily by Origen on
Leviticus. At Mass yesterday, the Gospel for the second scrutiny was read: the
story of the man born blind. Eyes, seeing, and light are - not surprisingly -
taking center stage as we build up to Easter. Eyes have been on my mind lately
quite a bit as well: I’m dealing with a pernicious and annoying problem in one
eye that has sorely tested my wherewithal for patient suffering.
There is a deeper meaning in the fact that the high priest sprinkles the blood towards the east. Atonement comes to you from
the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to
look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being
born for you. You are never to walk in darkness; the great and final day is not to enfold you in darkness. Do not let the night
and mist of ignorance steal upon you. So that you may always enjoy the light of knowledge, keep always in the daylight of faith,
hold fast always to the light of love and peace.
Added to my reading stack: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,
thanks to slowly growing interest in Lisp. I’ve also been looking at Common Lisp: A
Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation and working through a few
tutorials. I am not likely to make a mid-career change to Lisp developer, but I
am thoroughly enjoying thinking about computers and programs a bit
differently. Quite a bit differently, actually. Just as a purely mental exercise
it’s been worth the effort so far. If I could just get used to emacs keybindings
now…
In other, semi-related tech news: I tweaked my at-home Linux setup to use the i3
tiling window manager. So far so good. Having to break a few habits related to
xfce’s workspace switching, but otherwise I think it’s going well. Some radio
apps aren’t particularly well-suited to tiling, or I haven’t figured out how to
make them so. There’s always float mode, I suppose.
Jesus of Nazareth, a personal meditation by Pope Benedict XVI on the person of
Christ, focuses on the portion of Jesus' public life from His baptism in the
Jordan to the Transfiguration. The little book is dense, which ought to come as
no surprise given Benedict’s extensive academic background. I say this to say
that it’s slow going.
Proceeding through the Sermon on the Mount, the Holy Father offered this
meditation on the second Beatitude:
Let us go back to the second Beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they
shall be comforted” (Mt 5:4). Is it good to mourn and declare mourning blessed?
There are two kinds of mourning. The first is the kind that has lost hope, that
has become mistrustful of love and truth, and that therefore eats away and
destroys man from within. But there is also the mourning occasioned by a
shattering encounter with the truth, which leads man to undergo conversion and
to resist evil. This mourning heals, because it teaches man to hope and to love
again. Judas is an example of the first kind of mourning: Struck with horror at
his own fall, he no longer dares to hope and hangs himself in despair. Peter is
an example of the second kind: Struck by the Lord’s gaze, he bursts into healing
tears that plow up the soil of his soul. He begins anew and is himself renewed.
Some time ago, I was talking to a priest about confession, and one of the things
that I told him was that I was having a bit of trouble with the examination of
conscience forms that you find online in various places. They generally follow
the Ten Commandments, and frankly I found myself having a difficult time finding
myself in them. On the other hand, I couldn’t for a moment believe that I’d
spent the weeks since my last confession in a state of complete perfection. Oh
sure, there was the usual collection of venial sins, but what could I go to
re-frame self-examination? He suggested that I begin looking to the Beatitudes.
This turned out to be really good advice, for where the Decalogue is pretty
cut-and-dried (“Do not kill,” even allowing for all of those things that stop
short of actual murder but nevertheless gravely harm the spirit of another), the
Beatitudes force the reader to put himself into the place of, for example, a
peacemaker.
What would the blessed peacemaker look like? How would he react in
this particular situation, or how would he respond conflicts large and small?
And, then: was this me? Did I live this out? What action, stillness, word, or
silence did I omit, thus falling short? We first have to dare to imagine what
the blessed look like. Well not entirely imagine - the example stands before
us in the person of Christ. We have to imagine a hunger and thirst for
righteousness, see ourselves hungering and thirsting for the righteousness of
the kingdom and all that entails. Then and only then are we animated to act and
speak, or more importantly, remain still and silent. With God’s grace, we will
be the peacemakers, poor in spirit, and meek He described.
Jesus of Nazareth extensively quotes Jacob Neusner’s A Rabbi Talks with
Jesus, which will probably wind up on my to-read list shortly. It seems to have
been favorably reviewed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and looks to be an excellent
follow-on to Sacks and Soloveitchik.
A friend of mine loaned me a copy of Peter Kreeft’s Symbol or Sustance: A
Dialogue on the Eucharist which posits an imaginary dialogue between C.S.
Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Billy Graham, discussing the Real Presence from their
respective traditions. I’m always a little suspicious of imaginary dialogues
from real people, but I thought Kreeft did a good job preserving the individual
voices without sliding into wish-fulfillment. Kreeft, a Catholic, deeply
respects the integrity of the three positions. As he states in the introduction,
this is the only way it could work without turning one or more of the characters
into caricatures. The book contains a few occasions of Lewis and Tolkien reading
from their notes and papers, including this bit from Lewis' The Weight of Glory:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to
remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day
be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to
worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only
in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one
or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming
possibilities, it is with awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should
conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all
play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a
mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and
their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke
with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
This does not mean we are perpetually solemn. We must play. But out merriment
must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists
between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no
flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and
costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the
sinner — no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy
parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the
holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is
holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat — the
glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
Today will be a double-post sort of day. I came across a section in Jesus of
Nazareth on the second Beatitude and want to spend some more time ruminating on
it.
I’m laying the Nouwen collection aside for awhile. He’s a good writer, but I’m
starting to feel like this anthology could be retitled Henri Nouwen and the Nth
Voyage of Self-Discovery. Maybe it was too much Nouwen at once. Our pastor made
a reference to Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth during his homily last
Sunday, and I happened across it in a used-bookstore the next day. Recognizing
Divine Providence in action, I snatched it up for $4. So far so good. I will
probably also pick up the two follow-ons, which cover the infancy narratives and
the events of Holy Week respectively.
Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of my brother’s death. I think about him
often, and he was especially on my mind in the days leading up to yesterday.
Lots of things went on yesterday: loved ones struggling with decisions, the
daily madness of a family of eleven, really big moments at work. In the midst of
it all, the veil between us thinned somewhat. We prayed for him, and trust that he does so
for us.
Today’s Office of Readings included a homily from St. John Chrystostom, bishop:
Our spirit should be quick to reach out toward God, not only when it is engaged
in meditation; at other times also, when it is carrying out its duties, caring for
the needy, performing works of charity, giving generously in the service of
others, our spirit should long for God and call him to mind, so that these works
may be seasoned with the salt of God’s love, and so make a palatable offering to
the Lord of the universe. Throughout the whole of our lives we may enjoy the
benefit that comes from prayer if we devote a great deal of time to it.
Prayer is the light of the spirit, true knowledge of God, mediating between God
and man.
Henri Nouwen writes a great deal about prayer. I’m making my way through a
collection of eight of his books. I thought The Genesee Diary was wonderful
and I recommend it to anyone who’s curious about either Nouwen or the ins and
outs of life in a Trappist monastery. The homily above finds loud echoes in the
Little Way of St. Therese: do small things with great love, and you turn them
into prayer. The larger Nouwen collection is also good, though substantial parts
of the books so far seem to be written for an audience of priests and those who
form them. I just started ¡Gracias! - another diary, this time of his time in
South America.
For Lent, I’ve left all social media behind. Wherever possible, I’m trying to
leave the graphical Internet behind as well. I did this last year, too, and
found the text-only web lends itself to a couple of good things. First, it’s a
heck of a lot faster. I already filter our surfing with a pi-hole and run uBlock
Origin in all of my browsers as an extra layer. But limiting the web to
text-only browsers completely…well, speed is on a whole new level. There’s no
javascript support, so most of the websites you’re likely to use won’t work
quite right, or even render at all. Even so, I’ve found lightweight or text-only
versions of just about everything I need: weather, news, research, and so on. I
can read my mail with mutt, and there’s even a CLI twitter client which works
pretty well, though I’m not using it. I do have to emerge from 1989 for work,
though, but otherwise my main setup is retro-tacular. I already use vim for all
of my editing needs, and irc is just as textual as it’s ever been. Emojis work
even in the terminal.
In addition to being faster, I find it much easier to walk away from, which is
important, since another Lenten focus for me has been to spend less free time in
front of screens and more engaged in study, prayer, and family time. The online
world is a constant visual assault. Strip everything back to elemental text and
you really get a feel for just how bad it is.
Finally, it’s a nice bit of nostalgia. Folks my age and older still have the pre-Internet
world in their living memory, and the early days looked just like this. So I’ll
allow that maybe this is just a lot of old-geezer-wheezing. But…it really is
faster and easier to leave. I mean, I’m not even kidding: I’ve seen one or two
articles proposing the resurrection of gopher, and if you don’t know what that
means, then it’s probably time. The sooner the better, I say.
I started and finished Joseph Soloveitchik’s The Lonely Man of Faith over the
weekend. I was at a retreat and this little book was a nice break from the
topics at hand. Are you supposed to take a break during a retreat? Isn’t a
retreat supposed to be break of its own? A meta-break, then. It’s a short book -
just over 100 pages - though portions of it are dense with philosophical terms
that I had to lookup when I got back into cellphone signal range.
Starting with the two creation stories in Genesis, the essay’s main thesis is
that man is created with two sides in constant tension: Adam the first, who is
commanded to “subdue the earth” through his own powers in a sort of utilitarian
imperative, and Adam the second, who is commanded to tend and cultivate the
garden. Adam the first experiences community immediately; Adam the second
experiences a profound loneliness that is remedied by his defeat. God puts him
to sleep and, after an act of sacrifice, Eve joins him in garden.
The modern world, in Soloveitchik’s estimation (and this essay was originally
published in the mid 60s') is full of the astonishing achievements of Adam the
first. So much so that there’s not a whole lot of space left for Adam the
second. Lacking any immediate utility, transcendent questions are left unasked,
or worst, asked and answered with more technology.
Let me diagnose the situation in a few terse sentences. Contemporary Adam the
first, extremely successful in his cosmic-majestic enterprise, refuses to pay
earnest heed to the duality in man and tries the deny the undeniable, that
another Adam exists beside, or rather, in him. By rejecting Adam the second,
contemporary man, eo ipso, dismisses the covenantal faith community as
something superfluous and obsolete. To clear up any misunderstanding on the
part of my audience, I wish to note that I am not concerned in this essay with
the vulgar and illiterate atheism professed and propagated in the most ugly
fashion by a natural-political community which denies the unique transcendental
worth of the human personality. I am referring to Western man who is affiliated
with organized religion and is a generous supporter of its institutions. He
stands today in danger of losing his dialectical awareness and abandoning
completely the metaphysical polarity implanted in man as a member of both the
majestic [Adam the first] and covenantal [Adam the second] community.
Membership in both communities is willed by God, says Soloveitchik, and the
proper response is to oscillate between both as appropriate, but not to advance
one at the expense of the other, and this goes for the man of faith as well.
There is good food for thought here. I came across a reference to this book in
Essays on Ethics; shortly thereafter, my wife came across another in a TED
talk by David Brooks. There are one or two places where I had to part ways
with the author - the Incarnation changes our understanding of God’s immanence in
ways otherwise accessible to Judaism - but they were brief detours and did not
affect his point. The introduction points out that the footnotes mostly
references to various Jewish sages and writing, but the essay is written in
universals. Anyone could read this without the benefit of the footnotes and come
out fine.
What is it then to be stable? It seems to me that it may be described in the
following terms: You will find stability at the moment when you discover that
God is everywhere, that you do not need to seek Him elsewhere, that He is here,
and if you do not find Him here it is useless to go and search for him elsewhere
because it is not Him that is absent from us, it is we who are absent from
Him…It is important to recognize that it is useless to seek God somewhere
else. If you cannot find Him here, you will not find Him anywhere else. This is
important because it is only at the moment that you recognize this that you can
truly find the fullness of the Kingdom of God in all its richness within you;
that God is present in every situation and every place, that you will be able to
say: ‘So then I shall stay where I am.’
— Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
Last night at RCIA, the catechumens and candidates learned about the mystical
body of Christ and the communion of saints. I’m not sure how many of them
understood it. I’m not sure how many of us do, either, to be honest. The
discussion on saints was a little easier and some of the teachers and volunteers
were asked to share their particular patrons. I talked briefly about Saint
Benedict and how his Rule, though originally written to organize a monastery,
contains deep wisdom for anyone seeking to live in community with others.
Outside the confines of a monastery, adapted for life in The World, the Rule
teaches us to encounter Christ here, now, in this particular place and with
these people: a family, a neighborhood, an office, a parish.
The Benedictine motto ora et labora comes quickly to mind, maybe especially
so for bookish folks. Work/study and prayer - what else does anyone need? Maybe
it’s all any of use can do to work and pray within the confines of an
all-too-crazy daily schedule. The demands on our attention are constant and
unrelenting, and we seem to do our damnedest to keep it that way. The idea of
carefully proscribed life within a monastic enclosure…well, what’s not to love
about that? But you can’t flee from humanity into a monastery - Thomas Merton
wrote that you only find humanity there again, perhaps writ larger for the
smallness of the space.
Bookwise: I’m nearly done with Essays on Ethics and just ordered a couple of
books by Henri Nouwen, one of which I’ll try to save for an upcoming retreat.
Stability, as the Rule describes it, is fundamental. It is something much more
profound than not running away from the place in which we find ourselves. It
means not running away from oneself. This does not involve some soul searching,
self-indulgent introspection. It means acceptance: acceptance of the totality of
each man and woman as a whole person involving body, mind and spirit, each part
worth of respect, each part calling for due attention. Benedictine emphasis on
stability is not some piece of abstract idealism: it is typically realistic.
— Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict
What does it mean to meet someone where they are? For me it means that I must
first understand where they are and how they got there. It means listening a
great deal and quieting down, immediately, any initial responses, defenses, or
reactions. It is respecting the inviolate dignity of those before me and the
paths they’ve traveled, maybe, even a little, dying to the self a bit in order
to imagine as fully as possible the world through other eyes. Dying to self
may sound a bit over-the-top, but it seems apt. The voice within that rises in
response must be stilled. The knee-jerk reaction that runs toward a joke or
making light must be stopped dead in its tracks. All of that must be put aside.
This also means that a lot must be forgotten. Not everything, but enough to see
the Church with the same large, bold lines that are seen by anyone outside from
a distance. All of the beautiful filigree work, the rococo decoration, and
staggering detail must be laid aside for a bit, in order that we might sit
beside the newcomer and see, as through new eyes again, the broad shapes and
rooflines. We want to run the seeker right into the center of it all to join us
in the dazzling beauty. Such is our joy! And we will, by degrees. Let’s meet
them outside, in the courtyard and rest on the bench for awhile.
There will be questions I can’t predict and obstacles I left behind years ago.
Let me recover humility, and perhaps some memory of my own struggles. Yes,
this was a thing for me too. Here is the map I was given. It was hard, but here
I am.
There is a time to state facts plainly, and a time to lead carefully and patiently.
Years ago, we were in a museum and came upon a painting by Picasso. Like a lot
of his work, it was full of strong angles and weird shapes. We might have walked
passed it after a glance. God bless whoever wrote the descriptive texts and
explanations. They took the time to step through the various elements of the
painting, the context, the subjects. All of a sudden, it was obvious. We bought
a print of it and have enjoyed it for years. This is a simple example, but I
think it makes the case. Cubism may not be for everyone. Much of it is not for
me, at any rate. A careful, patient explanation, however, made the difference
between momentary confusion followed by dismissal and an encounter with
something beautiful and original.
Do to no one what you yourself dislike. Give to the hungry some of your bread,
and to the naked some of your clothing. Seek counsel from every wise man. At
all times bless the Lord God, and ask him to make all your paths straight and
to grant success to all your endeavors and plans.
– Tobit 4:15a, 16a, 18a, 19, Morning Prayer, Wed. of Week 1
So recently I took a deep dive into the OT and found myself consulting one
Jewish source after another in an attempt to better understand the text and its
meaning. One thing led to another and I ended up starting Essays on Ethics: A
Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I’ve been a fan of
his for some time, ever since hearing a lecture he gave in New York several
years back on the subject of creative minorities.
I’m about 2/3 of the way through the book, and I’m reading it straight
through. The chapters, though, are meant to be read as companion pieces to the
weekly readings of the Torah, or parsha. Here’s a bit from the various first
piece, on Bereshit, “In the beginning,” Genesis 1:1-6:8:
What exactly is being said in the first chapter of the Torah? The first thing
to note is that it is not a standalone utterance, an account without a context.
It is in fact a polemic, a protest, against a certain way of understanding the
universe. In all ancient myth the world was explained in terms of battles of the
gods in their struggle for dominance. The Torah dismisses this way of thinking
totally and utterly. God speaks and the universe comes into being. This,
according to the great nineteenth-century sociologist Max Weber, was the end of
myth and the birth of Western rationalism…The universe that God made and that
we inhabit is not about power or dominance but about tov and ra, good and
evil. For the first time, religion was ethicised. God cares about justice,
compassion, faithfulness, loving-kindness, the dignity of the individual, and
the sanctity of life.
The parsha are explored with a particular focus on the ethical
dimensions: what is going on here, what is revealed about God, and what do we do
now, and so on. There is wisdom here for anyone. Highly recommended.