dcn. jquinby's scribbles

The forgiveness of particular venial sins comes about only through an act of fervor in the charity already possessed habitually. Aquinas rightly points out that this movement of contrition does not always occur. He writes, “it can happen that after someone has committed a venial sin, he will not actually think anything about abandoning the sin or holding to it, but he thinks perhaps that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles; and in this thought he falls asleep and dies.“²⁷ Obviously, according to Aquinas’s argument, this geometer has not yet been forgiven for his sin. The guilt remains. Nevertheless, because he maintained the love of God, he would ultimately still be destined for the beatific vision.

— Fr. Luke Wilgenbusch, Saved as Through Fire: A Thomistic Account of Purgatory, Temporal Punishment, and Satisfaction

The clear takeaway is that excessive, habitual thoughts about math are not necessarily good for your soul. The footnote references Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences, lib. 4, dist. 21, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1: “Potest autem quod aliquis postquam veniale peccatum commisit, nihil actualiter cogitet de peccato vel dimittendo vel tenendo; sed cogitet forte quod triangulus habet tres angulos aequales duobus rectis; et in hac cogitatione obdormiat, et moriatur.”

Christian life on earth is eternal life already begun. Sanctifying grace and charity endure eternally. St. John of the Cross speaks thus: “In the evening of our life we shall be judged by our love for God and neighbor.”

— Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Tiny nest. Hummingbird, maybe? I found it in the grass under one of our trees.

Un nidito (posiblemente de un colibrí) que encontré abajo de nuestros arboles.

Estoy empezando a soña en español como era joven y estudiante en la universidad. A veces practico en mente, describiendo cosas o conceptos teologicós, y por eso puedo contestar cuando hay preguntas sobre, por ejemplo, las ultimas cosas (el juzgo particular, etc). Esto pasó anoche en OCIA cuando terminamos la clase. Las otras catequistas ya saben que estoy preparando con estudios formales y frecuentemente refirén a mi las preguntas difíciles o complicadas. Bueno - aqui puedo tambien practicar como escribir (y lo siento si me falta acentos o otras marcas - no he configurado los caracteres…corto y pego desde otra terminal).

I subscribed to the paid version of Claude and want to give it a run for a bit. So far I like it. I had it review some stuff I had written and it came up with some pretty good suggestions and (probably not accidentally) a couple of compliments. Grist for the mill, so to speak. One thing I appreciate is the disclosure straight out of the gate that it won’t try to give precise citations (“which question in the Summa addresses XYZ,” for example). For larger, complicated issues it seems to do a pretty good job of breaking them down and some occasional serviceable synthesis of ideas.

I pasted the full text of a Wikipedia article that I was having some trouble parsing. It confirmed my unspoken hunch about some bias and provided what I thought to be an ample theological response.

In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity. No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live, when we recall how we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our mothers or grandmothers to make at home. It was a moment of culinary apprenticeship, somewhere between child-play and adulthood, when we first felt responsible for working and helping one another. Along with the fork, I could also mention thousands of other little things that are a precious part of everyone’s life: a smile we elicited by telling a joke, a picture we sketched in the light of a window, the first game of soccer we played with a rag ball, the worms we collected in a shoebox, a flower we pressed in the pages of a book, our concern for a fledgling bird fallen from its nest, a wish we made in plucking a daisy. All these little things, ordinary in themselves yet extraordinary for us, can never be captured by algorithms. The fork, the joke, the window, the ball, the shoebox, the book, the bird, the flower: all of these live on as precious memories “kept” deep in our heart.

This profound core, present in every man and woman, is not that of the soul, but of the entire person in his or her unique psychosomatic identity. Everything finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions. In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.

Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Dilexit Nos, par. 20-21

Class this weekend was good; I’ve summarized it below. iykyk.

I was not expecting a Herman Hesse reference in tonight’s reading.

Then came October full of merry glee:
For, yet his noule was totty of the must,
Which he was treading in the wine-fats see,
And of the ioyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frollick and so full of lust:
Vpon a dreadfull Scorpion he did ride,
The same which by Dianaes doom vniust
Slew great Orion: and eeke by his side
He had his ploughing share, and coulter ready tyde.

We are in the maddening time of the year when the outside looks like fall but feels like summer. The leaves are changing, there’s been frost in the morning but we’re still getting into the 80s during the day. I’ll rue these words come February, but I need autumn and winter to step on it.

Speaking of dreadfull Scorpions and the like, I noticed on Seek that Joro spiders have a couple of spots in Tennessee now, near Chattanooga and in a few other locations well to the west and east of here. This does not please me. I had been hearing about them from my folks in Atlanta for a while and got a chance to see them up close when I was down there a couple of weeks ago. I’m a live-and-let-live sort of person as regards spiders and whatnot, but these things are gross, and their webs are disgusting. I have not spotted any in our yard yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Papers submitted. They’re out of my hands and commended to Almighty God and the instructors who will grade them. I will use my remaining brain cells to finish Gilles Emery’s books on the Trinity before class in a couple of weeks. I’m still on my long Borges kick and am revisiting the short stories in English but occasionally bouncing back to the Spanish versions too. Not sure what I’ll look at next, to be totally honest. The end of our formal studies is slowly coming into view, which means reading and study will return to (mostly) self-directed, though likely along three parallel tracks: leisure, ministerial/study, and spiritual. Speaking of:

Chautard on the interior life was exactly what I needed, and I recommend it to anyone else who is looking for the how and why of developing a habit of contemplative prayer. My spiritual director seems to be a fan of French spirituality; prior to Chautard, he had me reading Frances De Sales and Jacques Phillipe. Something about Chautard reminds me of Evagrius, though I’m unsure why. I think it’s the close association he makes between contemplative prayer and active charity and the absolute necessity of the former to carry out the latter. In any event, my morning prayer routine looks something like this:

1. Office of Readings
2. Morning Prayer
3. Spiritual reading 5-10 minutes
4. Contemplative prayer, 20 minutes
5. Final prayer of thanksgiving and intent before wandering over to the office

I recently increased the time for contemplative prayer from 15 to 20 minutes; my goal is to get to 30, and I don’t think it will be terribly difficult. I use a timer to make myself accountable - originally to keep from quitting too soon. Now it serves to make sure I don’t stay in the chair too long! I can maintain this schedule just about every day of the week, though parts occasionally shift around if I’m serving mass early or, to be frank, feeling lazy on Saturday morning.

No nerd news for now. With a little more in the way of spare time I may start dipping back into radio stuff. I also promised myself a new game for the wintertime once schoolwork was done. I was weighing Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress and am leaning towards Rimworld right now. It seems easier to dip in and out of, and an online friend of mine who has played both agrees. I’m going to lay Factorio aside for now, though the new space expansion looks absolutely fantastic.