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:

1. 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.
2. A list of news organizations called “breaking,” which I usually turn on when Something Big is going on.
3. 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.

Go, now, attack Amalek, and put under the ban everything he has. Do not spare him; kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.

1 Samuel 15:3

What are we to make of this? Samuel has conveyed a message of the Lord to Saul: place Amalek (the people) under the ban, which amounts to total annihilation. Amalek has been a mortal enemy of Israel from the time of the Exodus, and God has sworn to deal with them once and for all.

Saul’s failure to complete this task - saving the best of the spoils in order that they may be offered as sacrifice to God - removes him from God’s favor, ultimately setting the stage for the anointing of David as king. This verse came up in a recent adult study class in church, and we’ve been reading and studying it since. This post is meant to summarize my readings and help put my thoughts into some semblance of order.

The USCCB’s online bible has this footnote for ban which reads:

…this terminology mandates that all traces of the Amalekites (people, cities, animals, etc.) be exterminated. No plunder could be seized for personal use. In the light of Dt 20:16–18, this injunction would eliminate any tendency toward syncretism. The focus of this chapter is that Saul fails to execute this order.

The Catholic Study Bible notes:

The interpretation of God’s will here attributed to Samuel is in keeping with the abhorrent practices of blood revenge prevalent among pastoral seminomadic people such as the Hebrews had recently been. The slaughter of the innocent has never been in conformity with the will of God.

Compare with the Flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In those cases, though, the effects are through the direct action of God Himself. In this case, it’s people taking up the sword. We’re horrified and rightfully so.

I want to approach this text with a couple of things in mind. First, I desire for my reading to be consonant with the Catholic approach to the scriptures. Secondly, the difficulty of this verse presents a stumbling block for many, and it’s important to be able to give an answer of some kind that meets the person where they are while maintaining fidelity to the text. That is, without whitewashing or hand-waving.

I have done a good bit of research on Amalek, Saul, this ban, and the challenges associated with it from a variety of sources: Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. The study, I think, has been fruitful and moved me to dig even deeper into the Old Testament.

First, is it even historically accurate? The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies alleges that wholesale exterminations as described in ancient texts probably never happened quite as described.

The genocidal campaigns claimed for the early Israelites, however, were largely fictional: the intrinsic improbability and internal inconsistencies of the account in Joshua and its incompatibility with the stories of Judges leave little doubt about this. Much of the biblical ideology of the ban was fact formulated later, in the seventh century BC, yet it was neither unique nor entirely a later literary invention.

And to be sure, the Amalekites pop up again several times in the OT. 1 and 2 Samuel were likely written between the 6th and 5th centuries BC. David was born around 1000 BC, so at a minimum we’re looking at a few centuries between the events described and the final versions of the text. Even if portions of 1 Samuel were written by Samuel, the New Jerome Biblical Commentary suggests evidence of heavy redaction after the fact. On the other hand, maybe it happened exactly as described. There’s no real reason to take the text at anything other than face value, except that it feels shockingly horrible. Moreover, we can’t even impute the failure of Saul to tenderheartedness or moral objection - later in 1 Samuel 22 we read that he had an entire city of priests killed for assisting David - “men, women, children, infants, and oxen, donkeys and sheep.” (1 Sam 22:11-19)

Questioning the absolute veracity of these accounts may seem to open the door to questioning the authority of anything else in the OT, but I’m not sure that necessarily follows. Dei Verbum is clear (emphasis mine):

…attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out.

So maybe it’s not history as we understand history today: a careful presentation of facts designed to convey, as accurately as possible, the events described. It doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to me that a set of stories about how a people came to be would be subject to a bit of dramatic embellishment over time, particularly in the context of David’s ascendancy to the throne. I hasten to add at this point that this is most certainly not the position I have found in the rabbinic commentaries I’ve looked at. Amalek represented nothing less than the complete annihilation of the people of Israel, stretching all the way back to the Exodus and threads of which continue into the modern age. At least one of the commandments given to Jews regarding Amalek is observed in the festival of Purim, remembering “what Amalek did to the Israelites.”

Even so, this text seems to have occasioned a fair amount of discussion, much of it devolving to the source of morality - in the act itself, or in the command?

Avi Sagi writes:

The question of whether moral obligations can be see as contingent on God’s command is an ancient one. Philosophical tradition tends to credit Plato, in the Eurthyphro with it’s first formulation. Current philosophical discourse usually presents the question in terms of the following dilemma: Is an act right (or wrong) because God commands it (or forbids it), or does God command (or forbid) an act because it is right (or wrong)? According to the first option - that an act is right or wrong because God commands or forbids it - moral obligations have no independent status and are conditioned by a divine command, which determines the moral value of an act. This approach, which in modern philosophy is referred to as “divine command morality,” is deeply rooted in Christian tradition and in contemporary philosophical thought. According to the second option - that God commands or forbids an act because it is right or wrong - God’s command does not determine the moral value of an act. Rather, God commands or forbids certain acts because of their intrinsic positive or negative value.

Later, in a summary of three major schools of thought opposite the position of strict realism:

The realistic approach suggests that the punishment was justified in light of Amalek’s wickedness. The various trends grouped under the rubric of the symbolic approach endorse a different view. The metaphysical trend intensifies the Amalekite evil and transforms it into the demonic foundation of existence. The conceptual trend expands the concrete dimensions of the story and turns it into a contest between ideas, whereas the psychological trend sees the story as a symbol of the existential human drama, a struggle against the evil inside us. All these trends agree on a characterization of Amalek as identical with evil and thus justify total war against it.

However, Maimonides found an interesting synthesis:

…Maimonides relied on two assumptions. First, that Amalek was punished because of a real event that took place in the past, and that this punishment was not meant as revenge; rather, its purpose was to prevent the occurrence of similar acts in the future. Second, he assumed that the Torah the biblical text as well as the rabbinic literature which refers to it make up a coherent legal system. If the Torah contains a general guideline forbidding the punishment of children for the sins of their fathers, then this instruction must also apply to Amalek. Resting on these two assumptions, Bornstein concluded that if the Amalekites no longer behaved like Amalekites, and, moreover, clearly expressed this through their readiness to adopt the basic norms of the seven Noachic commandments, as well as to pay tribute and enter into servitude, it would be wrong to kill them.

Finally:

The first premise of the moral trend is that the text must be interpreted coherently; neither the exegete nor the halakhist look at the text as an isolated unit, divorced from the broader context of the Torah and the rabbinic tradition. Moreover, if the basic assumption is that the Torah conveys the word of a good God, then a moral reading of the canonical text is not only a theoretical option but a religious obligation.

The moral approach is preferred by its supporters on the grounds that a literal reading may at times cast doubts on the notion that God is a good God. Advocates of the literal trend take issue precisely with this point. Although they accept that the text is usually read within a broader context, they do not believe that this context including an assumption of God’s goodness can be used to change the text’s clear meaning. The context might be useful in instances of textual ambiguity, they argue, but the punishment of Amalek is an explicit command and, therefore, we must assume that it is also morally correct.

As Christians, we read the OT with the knowledge of the Incarnate Christ and everything that happens with and through His passion, cross and resurrection. These graces come from the Holy Spirit, and would not have been available (or even comprehensible) to a reader contemporary with Saul. It’s impossible to separate the OT from the NT, as they effectively form one single history of our salvation. We read the OT for the story of the covenants that we might understand more deeply their fulfillment in Christ. Neither can stand alone.

The Catechism (emphases mine):

107 The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”

[…]

109 In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm, and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.

110 In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. “For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."

111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written."

[…]

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

Approaching scripture through the four senses, I come up with the following takeaways, starting with the position that this story is told, for our benefit and in this way for a particular reason, and probably not for the same reason that the writer intended for the original audience 1,500 years ago.

Literal: an order was given which flies in the face of everything we hold as Christians, but are we carrying modern sensibilities to a Bronze age semi-nomadic people? Certainly this seems to directly contradict the commandments against killing. Why was Amalek singled out for such a thing, whether it happened as described or not? If this was an error of interpretation on the part of Samuel, how was there no correction issued at some point? Or does the order - however it was carried out - simply play a part in the larger story of Saul vis-à-vis David? Certainly Amalek reappears later on in Scripture (1 Chron 18:11). In context, 1 and 2 Samuel tell the story of 2 kinds of king, a prophet, and God’s plan for his chosen people.

Allegorical: The struggle against evil in the world is very real. God intends to carry the people of the promise safely onward through history in order to form and prepare the nation from which the Savior will come in the fullness of time. Stephen Clark writes in The Old Testament in the Light of the New:

…The command to destroy the Amalekites is a special case in the history of the Israelite monarchy and has occasioned much discussion…the incident is probably a matter of spiritual warfare, warfare with Satanic forces, not just human warfare that we have considered in discussing the challenge of the Canaanites in the land. The Amalekites were a people who tried to destroy God’s people while they were being redeemed by God and were being provided for by him in the wilderness. (Ex 17:8-16; Deut 25:17-19). Their attack was therefore more directly on God himself than most later attacks and was perhaps the paradigm example of other nations attacking God by attacking his people….

The Amalekites could be considered typological of those who seek to wipe out God’s people and God’s rule in the world, and God’s response was typological of his commitment to destroy the kingdom of Satan. God’s command for how to deal with the matter was likely in many respects beyond the comprehension of his servants, but therefore all the more needed to be strictly obeyed.

Moral: “for our instruction” (Rom 15:4), Saul was not a man after God’s own heart. He lacked the inward disposition toward God’s will and instead substituted his own, preferring the externals of sacrifice, and probably insincerely at that. The lesson here for us is clear.

Anagogical: we are destined to be people after His heart, if only we turn from our idols here on earth. Our sin must also be completely put to death, in all of its shapes and forms. We will not be able to do it, not alone anyway.

Final thoughts I believe consonant with a Catholic understanding:

Whether this happened as described, as history, we cannot know precisely. These texts were completed at some remove from actual events. Nevertheless, the story is here, in scripture, “for our instruction.” What is this instruction? It certainly has nothing to do with genocide, or arbitrary killing - look at the totality of scripture, and especially the fulfillment of the Law in the person of Christ. Nothing could be further from any rational reading of the scriptures or sacred tradition.

What is God saying to us, today, through this text, even as we are conscious of the vast distance in time and space between the author and listener?

What was God asking of Saul? Obedience. Was he? Clearly not. Compare with Abraham, who obeyed and whose hand was stayed by the Lord. Who is to know what would have happened had Saul obeyed as instructed.

First, Amalek represents a type of sin and evil; we too must be ready to annihilate sin completely (though, like Saul, we will not be successful). Unlike Saul, we should strive properly order our disposition towards God’s will, even - and especially - when we don’t understand.

Second, these sayings are hard, and it is right that we struggle with them. Jews have likewise struggled with them for a long, long time. As Catholics we must take a multi-layered approach to scripture. This is borne out in the CCC, Dei Verbum, and in the Magisterium of Holy Church.

Third, we must acknowledge that some (all?) of this understanding comes as part of the gift and graces of faith, and that hard sayings are stumbling blocks.

Finally, without deep study, we will not be “prepared to give a reason” (1 Pt 3:15) We must continually read scripture in its totality, not in bits and pieces, isolated from context. We must also be sure that we are in harmony with the teachings of the Church, though which God continues to sanctify the world and save souls.

Sources:

• 1 Samuel 15:3, USCCB
• Dei Verbum
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Saul and the Amalekite Genocide, Pastor Steve McAlpine
• Did God Command Genocide?, Msgr. Charles Pope
• Hard Sayings of the Old Testament, Jimmy Akin
• EWTN Forum: Saul and Amalekites, Fr. John Echert
• Who Was Amalek and the Amalekites, Boruch Altein
• Does Torah Promote Genocide?, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
• Torah and Genocide FAQ, Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
• Ancient Jewish History: The Amalekites , Jewish Virtual Library
• The Catholic Study Bible
• The Old Testament in the Light of the New, Stephen B. Clark
• Reading the Old Testament, Lawrence Boadt, C.S.P.
• The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, S.J.
• The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses
• Sagi, Avi. “The Punishment of Amalek in Jewish Tradition: Coping with the Moral Problem.” The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 87, no. 3, 1994, pp. 323–346., www.jstor.org/stable/1509808.

We recently finished The Leftovers, and I’ve been deep in thought about it. A few thoughts follow, along with spoilers if you’ve not seen it.

I thought the show was a gorgeous and profound meditation on loss and our attempts to find meaning in the aftermath of loss. The shows doesn’t pull any punches. I felt the same sort of gnawing, existential dread that I found while reading Children of Men - the sense that while things have taken on a semblance of normalcy, the slow-motion collapse that was underway continually broke through any attempt to move beyond it.

I really wanted to see the character’s occupations fleshed out a little more. We got to see Laurie at her counselor’s practice; I wanted Kevin to do more Cop Stuff. I mean, he was the chief of police. Maybe I’ve seen too many procedural shows, but it might have been interesting to see him apply some investigative experience to the things he was witnessing. Ditto for Matt Jamison. As one of the only deeply faithful characters, we only get to see him in vestments once. I hoped for a scene of him conducting a worship service of some kind.

I liked that a lot of the show is left to the viewer’s interpretation - was this or that event supernatural? A coincidence? Part of this or that character’s madness? The show doesn’t say, so we’re free to read into (or out of) as we like. With the characters, we spend a lot of time trying to suss out what, exactly, the Sudden Departure really was. The mysterious act of a silent God? Freakish act of nature? Aliens? I’m not spoiling anything here if I tell you that no explanation is given, ever. If you’re looking for an answer, you won’t get one. You will get a conclusion though - the show winds up with a finale that is as fine as anything I’ve seen in a television show.

The performances are simply astonishingly good, it’s beautifully shot, and explores the sorts of Big Ideas that I tend to look for in books and movies. I’m glad it wound up well, but I miss following the characters as they looked for answers. The show was large on God - biblical symbols can be found all over the place: baptism, white doves, character names, and so on. All of it Old Testament, though. Very few references to Christ except some offhand comments and one very powerful dialogue in the final season. I’m not sure what to make of this, except that perhaps there’s more to mine in the way of cataclysms and mystery in the OT than the NT. Job figures prominently, for reasons that will become apparent as you watch.

In other news: have been digging deeply into some OT research of my own, thanks to a discussion in an adult study group last Sunday: 1 Samuel 15:3, to be precise - placing the Amelekites under the ban, i.e., total extermination. I believe I’ve come to an understanding and want to dig a bit further before I write it up here.

For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne
Wisdom 18:14-15

We are still in the octave of Christmas; tomorrow is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. A couple of nights ago, we watched Shadowlands, a movie about and C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham, played by Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. It put me in a mood to read more Lewis, and by happy coincidence, our oldest son was sorting though books he had used this past school year, and so Till We Have Faces and The Weight of Glory both ended up on my nightstand.

I did not know (or had forgotten, if I’d heard) the gist of Till We Have Faces, so I was effectively walking into it blind. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and want to follow it up at some point with Apuleius' Metamorphoses. I’ve always liked the reimagining-of-an-old-story type of novel, especially when it’s done well. I can hardly think of anyone else more suited to retelling a story of gods and losses than Lewis. On the heels of it, The Weight of Glory, a collection of papers and speeches on various subjects feels like a visit to the classroom after finishing the novel. I forget how utterly quotable Lewis is, even though I follow a daily-Lewis-quote twitterbot.

Something about his writing re-ignites some part of my imagination and brings it to bear on matters of faith. The closest I can come by way of a description is that it feels a bit like waking up, with a sudden realization “of course! it must be so!” The world suddenly seems…thicker than it was before. Maybe “re-enchanted” is a better word. The brittle, sterile pieces of daily modern life give way, just for a moment, to a golden sunlight just beyond. It all feels utterly familiar - a homecoming of sorts.

I think we do well to keep this bit of our imaginations active, and maybe at this time of the year most of all - the short days give way to early twilights and the lower sun shines in an odd way (to me), especially in the woods. Everything is dead, but the ground and tree trunks are covered in moss and brilliant green in the late afternoon. I only seem to see it in the dead of winter, usually when it’s bitter cold and wet-but-not-frozen. It’s very much like receiving an invitation to a party that’s some weeks away. This too shall pass and all will be well - winter will end, and here’s a tiny reminder of it.

This Christmas has been a good one so far: no one sick, quite a bit of the family around, generally agreeable weather (though wet). I always look forward to the blue volume of the breviary, the one for Advent/Christmas. It has some of my favorite texts, that quote from the book of Wisdom above chief among them, said at Vespers on the 26th.

On deck for reading: Peter Kreeft’s Heaven and Vatican II: The Essential Texts as edited by Fr. Norman Tanner, SJ. I would like to look into Henri Nouwen’s work as well, but have no idea where to start. In searching for the more formal and flowery version of that scripture above, I came across For Days and Years by H.L. Sidney Lear in the Google Books archive: scriptural readings, meditations, and hymns for each day of the year. The one for today, December the 31st, is too good not to share:

God is our Last End as well as our First Cause. God possessed, our own God, that is creation’s home, our last end, there only is our rest. Another day is gone, another week is passed, another year is told. Blessed be God, then, we are nearer to the end. It comes swiftly, it comes slowly too. Come it must, and then it will all be but a dream to look back upon. But there are stern things to pass through, and to the getting well through them there goes more than we can say. One thing we know, that personal love of God is the only thing which reaches God at last.
— F.W. Faber

Nearly done with the Hannah Arendt anthology and I’ve liked it enough to maybe go back and read a couple of her books in full, probably The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

I’m well under way in Newman’s essay on the development of Christian doctrine. I’m finding this an easier read than A Grammar of Assent. I’d probably recommend this along with his Apologia to anyone who wanted to get acquainted with him. A little background reading which situates him properly would also have been useful to me, but I followed my usual path of taking side-trips into Wikipedia along the way instead.

I had to do a bit of business traveling recently and took along Esther de Waal’s Seeking God, which is a wonderful little book on Benedictine spirituality and especially how it can apply to those of us firmly outside the monastery or convent. I leaned on it heavily during my travels, especially the bits on stability. The idea of stability might seem at odds with travel, but no:

For stability says there must be no evasion; instead attend to the real, to the real necessity however uncomfortable that might be. Stability brings us from a feeling of alienation, perhaps from the escape into fantasy and daydreaming, into the state of reality. It will not allow us to evade the inner truth of whatever it is we have to do, however dreary and boring and apparently unfruitful that may seem. It involves listening (something which the vow of obedience has illuminated) to the particular demands of whatever this task and this moment in time is asking; no more and no less.

More:

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 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 who is absent from us, it is we who are absent from Him…It is important to recognize that is is useless to see God somewhere else. If you cannot find Him here you will not find Him anywhere else. If you recognize this that you can truly find the fullness of the Kingdom of God in all is 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

So: Aquinas for making sense of the world and Benedict for living in it, with others, wherever we happen to be.

The stuff I read falls into the following categories:

Theology, Philosophy, Religion, and History

By far the largest bucket. Books tend to lead from one to the next, sometimes because I see a reference in a footnote or hear someone on a podcast mention something in passing related to something I’m reading. An author or work might come up over and over and if I’m not familiar with the person or the book, there’s a good chance it’ll get added to my queue. This is the stuff usually covered here in the blog. First Things is a frequent go-to for titles, though usually in the context of the articles rather than the book reviews. These are the Serious Books.

Deliberately work-related

Books squarely in the realm of Business writing. My least favorite genre, and usually something I only visit once every few years. Tom Peters, Clayton Christensen, and Geoffrey Moore are who you’re likely to find here. I’m not much for the corporate book du jour (e.g. Who Moved My Cheese and the like). It has to have real currency in the industry or be something that everyone at HQ is passing around, knowledge of which I hope will help me read the corporate tea leaves.

Things tangential to work but formative

Usually, but not always, technical material. Could be something like Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows or Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil. I get a couple of pubs from ACM; they’d fall into this category too (Communications and Transactions on Internet Technology). Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury are another example.

Everything else

Big-idea scifi or historical fiction (think Jeff VanderMeer, Frank Herbert, and Patick O’Brian), nature writing (Henry Beston, Wendell Berry, and Anne Dillard). The Atlantic. Current stuff circulating in the nerd/Catholic blogosphere.

Online stuff and Podcasts

All over the map, but I reliably visit the following at least once a day/listen semi-regularly: Arts and Letters Daily, Longreads, Hacker News, Get Religion, 99% Invisible, odds and ends from the ARRL.