Manalive!

New Location

2007-01-03T19:51:00.000-06:00

Decided to make a move over to Wordpress. If I decide I don't like it I'll come back here. Until then, posting at: http://thicketandthorp.wordpress.com

Make Haste, Make Haste, Haste...

2007-01-02T19:12:00.000-06:00

Well, in actuality, I'm not nearly as harried and compelled to make haste as I could be. But sometimes... I've taken to drinking a lot of tea and coffee; Scholastic philosophers and eighteenth century British Imperial economics seem to become clearer under the influence of caffeine.

Anyway, it's the New Year, and I'm resolved to write and blog more, which will likely mean a lot of mostly useless ruminations on whatever I'm reading and writing about in 'real life.' Right now that means Roman religion from the time of the Republic, the history of the British Empire (and, on here anyway, what that history means for the American (in?)formal empire), and philosophical/theological musings from any number of corners and crannies. With that, here's a relevant piece of wisdom from the French 'Christian existentialist' philosopher Gabriel Marcel:

‘There are many reasons for this regrettable state of affairs; one of them no doubt is the gasping, hurrying rhythm of our lives; I am not referring only to the relative absence of true leisure today, but also the increasing incapacity even of genuinely philosophic minds to follow out a long continuous task, the sort of task that requires perseverance and a good wind, in the long-distance runner’s sense. Every student today is forced to get his results as quickly as possible, no matter by how many improper short cuts, so that he can get his degree or his doctorate and land his job. The results of scholarship are measured by a temporal coefficient; the point is not merely to get one’s result, but to get it in as little time as possible. Otherwise the whole value of one’s researches may be called into question, even the possibility of earning a modest livelihood may be swept away. This is a very serious matter, for such conditions are at the opposite pole to those required for the real flowering of the intelligence, in the richest sense of that word.’

Gabriel Marcel, Mystery of Being, Vol. I

Throw-Away Society

2006-11-10T16:47:00.000-06:00

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote in 1970 that consumption had become the axis of culture. The “consumer society” was born. Its midwife was cheap credit. For the first time, ordinary people like my parents didn’t have to wait to buy something until they’d saved up enough money. They got it on the never-never.

Even so, for a time they mostly bought only what they absolutely needed. If we did the same today the economy would collapse overnight.

"Wasting Away"

Paradise Is The Love of God

2006-11-06T11:25:00.000-06:00

Paradise is the love of God, wherein is the enjoyment of all blessedness.

The person who lives in love reaps the fruit of life from God, and while yet in this world, even now breathes the air of the resurrection.

In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

St. Isaac the Syrian

O America!

2006-11-05T02:05:00.000-06:00

The past few days, through various circumstances, I've had the privelege of wandering about several parts of these United States, both parts known (to me) and unknown until now. Some transcripts from these travels:

In my native Mississippi, my youngest brother and I went fossil and plant hunting along the Alabama-Mississippi state line, where Buckatunna Creek flows down to meet the Chickasawhay River, before their combined waters slowly make their way to the Gulf. We came across some nice limestone glades with lots of fossil shells, clams, and at least one shark's tooth. Yes, Mississippi has rocks and even fossils, though not very many. We get quite excited when we find some. We also went looking for odd plants, as Joseph (he's nine) is currently on a botany kick, and it's long been a hobby of mine. The highlight of our outing was a little bog outside of State Line, MS, where we dug up a dwarf red pitcher plant, one of several insect-devouring plants that inhabits South Mississippi.

Last weekend, my mother and Joseph took a short trip to Chattannooga, TN, which we had not visited in several years. We actually stayed at the venerable Roy Accuff Inn a few miles outside of Chattannooga, in Jasper. The Inn proudly announces "American-Owned"; or rather, it did when we arrived. The sign changed one night to "Owned and Operated by Accuff Family." Not exactly sure why either was particularly significant. At any rate, the place is pretty decent, though I ran out of hot water one morning, which was rather disconcerting. Still the continental breakfast was excelsior.

We wandered about the battlefield on Lookout Mountain, and later drove down to the Chickamauga. On the way there I happened to notice a sign pointing the way to the John Ross House, which lies just behind a gap in the famous Missionary Ridge. I'd never noticed the house before, so we drove over to look at it. It's behind a fence, tours on a prior arrangement basis only, and has a little lake in front swarming with ducks who beg for handouts. John Ross left the house- which is made of sturdy logs and fronts a lovely hillside- to join the other Cherokee on their forced expulsion by the US Federal government in the 1830's. He was himself only 1/8th Cherokee, but choice exile with them. A few years later the remnants of Rosecrans' army would pass by the house before settling into Chattannooga. A few months after that the remnants of Bragg's army would pass nearby fleeing into Georgia, and with them still more things would pass forever away.

Tonight I am in Longview, Washington, with my university's speech and debate team (which has done fairly well in competition, I must say). It is no longer raining outside but it has been for a couple of days. The local folks inform me it only started raining a couple days ago and that it had been sunny and lovely for a couple of weeks. Ah well. Portland, Oregon, had a wonderfuly large- gigantic- bookstore, where I purchased a few things. It was an exceedingly happy place. Longview is not very large and distinctive mainly for the quirky Squirrel Bridge and Squirrel Statue. Rather odd. This is my first time in the Pacific Northwest; interesting place, interesting people. Different. Many of the people I've met have had little if any contact with Mississippians, so that makes for interesting inter-cultural exchange. And of course, we've the whole Storm to talk about, which everyone has heard about. So now people have two things to connect with Mississippi: poverty and racism, and the Hurricane. Well... This part of the world could use more sunlight. We're thinking of going sight-seeing tommorrow, contingent upon the weather, which I predict will involve rain. Makes for magnificent trees though.

Even When the Heart is Slowly Dying

2006-10-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

Even when the heart
is slowly dying
the flowers still bloom.

A dewdrop world
hanging suspended in the dawn
and yet, and yet...

In the midst
of the cherry blossoms
there are no strangers.

Issa (1762-1826)

Mountain Music (In Nepal)

2006-10-21T15:07:00.000-05:00

Via hearingvoices.org I came across this music-gathering group working in Nepal: Mountain Music Project. They are working to preserve a style of music from a mountaineer caste in Nepal whose music is strongly reminiscent of Southern Appalachian traditional music and its more modern manifestations in bluegrass. Listening to the fiddle playing and accompanying slightly throaty singer on one of the songs on the site I could have almost sworn it was Southern Appalachian.

To Ibn Khaldun, Who Wrote A History of the World

2006-10-03T17:36:00.000-05:00

O Ibn Khaldun!
Wrapped once about your turban
Lifted up inside your head
A thought to carry in the mind
I think we were once alright
Morning light on the Maghreb, sheer
Oh everything is still not clear
And the caravans go passing by, ah
Wander through the night
Over the blood in the sand
No everything is still not clear

And when you hear the sound of marching
In the tops of the balsam trees
Over the scarp of the dying stones
The broken unhealing scab
(The pilgrim’s feet shuffle over the earth)
We will rise up and say
All the things that time-
Yours, mine, and every rhyme-
Has left unsaid
Caught up in the echoing head
The songs in the balsam trees
(Is there a balm in Gilead?)
We are left to dream it
Write it down and sing

On Meekness and Humility

2006-09-30T21:47:00.000-05:00

"Learn of me," he says, "becasue I am meek and humble of heart." Meekness keeps the temper steady, and humility frees the mind from conceit and vainglory.

St. Maximus Confessor, The Four Hundred Chapters on Love

Pope Benedict on Reason

2006-09-15T10:24:00.000-05:00

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections

{This of course is the speech that has raised so much unreasonable furor- ironic considering the speech's actual content- in the Islamic world. It is in fact a nice speech, though it has precious little to do with Islam. Besides that, his Holiness says nothing innacurate in regards to Islam, and certainly not in regards to Manuel II's perceptions of it.}

Julius Yarezky, Originally of Poland But Later of Shuqualak, Mississippi: Postwar

2006-09-11T23:18:00.000-05:00

A Dialogue in Two Parts

I.

Julius Yarezky: Once we climbed the white stone
All slick, slipping by the Noxubee
And above the trees sleeping at the riverside
We rested, held our vigil on the
Lilting lightly brown brimming water.
Do you remember that day?
(I did not forget.)

His Son: There are many things I’ve forgotten.
That was many years past, I guess.
So much distance, time, in the
Intermission.

Julius: Well.
Much, so much, I would forget
Other things (not that time though, there and then)
But the worst too deeply ingrain
I would speak them up but for
All the things broken loose when they’re released.
When the way is ash
It filters through your clothes
Clogs up your nose and
Fills in the spaces left void.
No matter how hard you shake your shoes
And clap your hands around again.
All the distances: oceans crossed, of water and blood
Come clinging hard and deep.

II.

(Interlude. Julius remains in Shuqualak; his son is away at school again; his son writes to him.)

Son: Father:
The text alone
Unfleshed and unsouled
(In the space beyond the reckoning)
Only carries through so far
And though we lift aloft the word
It is only more than page when it becomes spoken
When it finds its locus in the known
In some inner, selfsame connection.
That leads me to this:
What can you tell
Me of the War lately passed?

Julius: If I could embrace you
And breathe in the memory
Call to you the terror and the flame
The faces of the dead and the final stillness-
All things these words fall flat on-
Certainly you would recoil
And fear for your own father,
For the things I’ve done, seen, hated.
It was
An awful thing, my son, that war: all wars-
And I charge you this, short of my
Skill to speak these things:
I charge you:
(Write this also upon your brow)
Do not be beguiled by the flash of sword
Clash of spurs and guns rimrods clinging-
Dead men speaking’s heroics
Flee fast those things and say:
My father has felt that way forward
And stumbled through its night.
No, nothing really ever passes.
The ash is still clinging.

{Julius Yarezky was a Polish Jewish immigrant to America who settled in Shuqualak, MS, sometime before the Civil Warand gradually rose in society from his initial occupation as a scrap-collector and peddlar. During the war he served with distinction in the Confederate army, and after it he was a fairly well-off and prominent citizen of Shuqualak (which is also my hometown of sorts), even being elected mayor. His son went to boarding school after the death of Mrs Yarezky (whom Julius had met outside of Meridian while Sherman was razing that town in 1864); at some point he wrote to his father asking about the war. I don't have the full text of Mr Yarezky's response but I incorporated the sentiments somewhat here.}

Following Ibn Battuta

2006-09-10T21:54:00.000-05:00

Ibn Battuta was a fourteenth century Moroccan who, at the age of twenty-one, went on the hajj to Mecca, then found that wandering was in his blood, and thus proceeded to tramp all over the known world. He traveled to India and China, sailed about Southeast Asia, went all over Central Asia, met with a former Byzantine Emperor, and wandered around sub-Saharan Africa, including a jaunt over the Sahara with a trading caravan. Those would be considerable accomplishments in today's world- in his time they were truly remarkable, for scope and duration. However, it should be noted he had far less trouble crossing borders and such compared to a modern-day traveler.

Someone apparently is retracing Ibn Battuta's steps, and she's blogging about it at Girl Solo in Arabia. She's made it so far from Morocco across North Africa into Egypt at present. But where Ibn Battuta simply crossed North Africa without hindrance (other than the occasional threat of Arab raiders), she was forced to turn around at the Morocco-Algeria border and instead fly to Algeria.

Maternal Grandfather

2006-09-08T14:38:00.000-05:00

Ch’oi Hong-kwan, our maternal grandfather,
was so tall his high hat would reach the eaves,
scraping the sparrows’ nests under the roof.
He was always laughing.
If our grandmother offered a beggar a bite to eat,
he was always the first to be glad.
If our grandmother ever spoke sharply to him,
he’d laugh, paying no attention to what she said.
Once, when I was small, he told me:
‘Look, if you sweep the yard well
the yard will laugh.
If the yard laughs,
the fence will laugh.
Even the morning-glories
blossoming on the fence will laugh.’

Ko Un, from Ten Thousand Lives (Maninbo)

On War

2006-09-07T18:02:00.000-05:00

If the existence of war always implies injustice in one at least of the parties concerned, it is also the frightful parent of crimes. It reverses, with respect to its objects, all rules of morality. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated. Whatever renders human nature amiable or respectable, whatever engages love or confidence, is sacrificed at its shrine. In instructing us to consider a portion of our fellow-creatures as the proper objects of enmity, it removes, as far as they are concerned, the basis of all society, of all civilization and virtue; for the basis of these is the good-will due to every individual of the species, being a part of ourselves…

The sword, and that alone, cuts asunder the bond of consanguinity which unites man to man. As it immediately aims at the extinction of life, it is next to impossible, upon the principle that every thing may be done to him whom we have a right to kill, to set limits on military license; for, when men pass from the dominion of reason to that of force, whatever restraints are attempted to be laid on the passions will be feeble and fluctuating…. The rules of morality will not suffer us to promote the dearest interest by falsehood; the maxims of war applaud it when employed in the destruction of others. That a familiarity with such maxims must tend to harden the heart, as well as to pervert the moral sentiments, is too obvious to need illustration....

Detesting war, considered as a trade or profession, and conceiving conquerors to be the enemies of the species, it appears to me that nothing is more suitable to the office of a Christian minister, than an attempt, however feeble, to take off the colours from false greatness, and to show the deformity which its delusive splendour too often conceals. This is perhaps one of the best services religion can do to society. Nor is there any more necessary. For, dominion affording a plain and palpable distinction, and every man feeling the effects of power, however incompetent he may be to judge of wisdom and goodness, the character of a hero, there is reason to fear, will always be too dazzling. The sense of his injustice will be too often lost in the admiration of his success.

Rev. Robert Hall, Sermon On War, 1802

(Robert Hall was a British Baptist minister with whom I am not particularly familiar; I came across this passage while doing book conversation work in the archive of the museum in which I am presently employed on work-study. I thought the excerpts from his sermon on war- which has quite a few outspoken and powerful such passages- presents an interesting, if historical, Evangelical voice on the nature and morality of war, in contradistinction to many contemporary Evangelical voices.)

Ibn Khaldun On History

2006-09-06T12:01:00.000-05:00

History is a discipline widely cultivated among nations and races. It is eagerly sought after. The men in the street, the ordinary people, aspire to know it. Kings and leaders vie for it.

Both the learned and the ignorant are able to understand it. For on the surface histroy is no more than information about political events, dynasties, and occurences of the remote past, elegantly presented and spied with proverbs. It serves to entertain large, crowded gatherings and brings us an understanding of human affairs. It shows how changing conditions affected human affairs, how certain dynasties came to occupy an ever wider space in the world, and how they settled the earth until they heard the call and their time was up

The inner meaning of history, on the other hand, involves speculation and an attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge of the how and why of events. History, therefore, is firmly rooted in philosophy. It deserves to be accounted a branch of philosophy.

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah

Give & Take

2006-09-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

In Return of the Tribes in the Weekly Standard Ralph Peters(tip to Eunomia) writes an insightful article, though it is rather over-indulgent in his own thesis, which concerns the staying power of globalism in its contemporary manifestation. Globalism, of course, is nowhere near being a new or modern phenomenom: we have only lately seen the demise (largely) of the last great neo-colonialist system, namely in Soviet and Maoist Communism. Before that was European colonialism, and before that were numerous systems, empirialist and otherwise, that sought some form of globalism. Some have been more successful than others.

Mr Peters focuses upon the experience of Islam and Christianity and its advance from the Near East to the rest of the world, and finds in that expereince parallels with contemporary globalism. He points out that both religions have found difficulty in transposing their systems to insular peoples, particularly those of the forests, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There is a great deal of truth in his claims. However, he seems to set up to strong of a contrast between local manifestations of the given faith and the percieved 'global' orthodox manifestation of that faith. Several problems arise with such a contradistinction. First, particularly with Islam, both faiths begin as 'local' faiths, albiet with a universal vision. Yet each is initially very firmly connected with the localized manifestation of faith, praxis, and culture in which it began, both on a conscious level and the unconcious. In Islam there is a continuous undertone of regional conflicts, regional ideas, and regional people, that is manifested in the Quran and thus becomes part of the deposit of orthodoxy. The importance of the Ka'aba and its haram, the sacred precint, which is crucial to one of the Five Pillars, is for example a uniquiely local religious phenomenom, though of course it has reflections in all religious systems. Likewise in Christianity Jewish ideas and local practices coexist with more uniquiely Christian ones.

This process of give-and-take, in which local elements are either adapted, combatted, or somehow subsumed, into 'orthodoxy,' has always existed within the context of the global/local interaction. Another example one might raise in regards to both Islam and Christianity is the cultus of the saints. In neither one is it explicit in core Scripture and initial doctrine- yet it arises very soon. In Islam of course there is more initial disagreement- the Quran has a couple of verses that would seem to rather explicitly disbar the Christian cultus of the saints- yet it rather quickly becomes an important aspect in much of the Islamic world.

In both the cultus of the saints becomes one of the arguably most important means of give-and-take and hence integration of local concerns and identity within an orthodox context: and it does so without sacrificing orthodoxy, or even catholicity. For a Turkic (Sunni) Muslim of Central Asia or China, or an Anglo-Saxon Christian of Northumbria, the cultus of the saints very early on provides a way to centre the new faith in the local community. First, it provides a definite, incarnate locus of the new faith, both concretely- the saint while alive teaches and preaches and works miracles- but also in a more metaphysical/self-identity way, particularly after the saint's death. St. Such-and-Such becomes our saint, his shrine is here in our town or region: yet he continues to exist within the broader religious community, whether of the umma or the Church Catholic. Thus the saint becomes both a means of local identity and local integration into the 'global' religious community.

The give-and-take continues under the cultus of the saints. Mr Peters notes- rightly- a tendency in developing world Christianity and Islam to emphasize 'temporal' things, such as healings, aid in prosperity, and such. The desire for concrete, here-and-now manifestations of spiritual realities is certainly very strong in 'non-Western' societies-and, actually, Western ones, as it is silly for various reasons to call Latino Christians 'non-Western.' But that is another topic. Anyway, these temporal blessings are a strong drive in much of the world- in my limited travels and interaction with non-Western Christians it has been quite noticeable. And yes, usually when I am around Christians who talk quite candidly about healings and such, I begin to feel a little nervous. Yet arguably it is I who am out of touch with the broader Christian experience. For again we find, actually from the very beginning, a bold and central affirmation of miracles.

And this affirmation again undergoes a give-and-take interaction with local cultures, in both Christianity and Islam, under the cultus of the saints. Now, the supposed collapsing of local gods and spirits into saints is overblown and usually inaccurate (Peter Brown's The Cult of the Saints is an excellent examination of this topic), but it is not inaccurate to say that the cultus meets local needs and ideas. Indeed, one may recall Pope Gregory's instruction to handle pagan culture lightly- not to engage in syncrynism, but to seek to mold the give-and-take, inherent in such interactions, so as to at once remain orthodox yet meet local needs within a local context. One of these was and is the need for physical things. Healings and other miracles are strongly associated with the saints, and their shrines become centres of healing, which further reinforce their status as locii of local identity and catholic integration. I might also note that just because people believe in miracles and such strongly it does not necessarily follow that they are uninterested in the more transendental aspects. People are quite capable of maintaing both. But that is really a whole different topic.

All of that is to emphasize that to characterize the interaction of 'global' orthodoxy and the local is artificial if it over-collapses the interaction into a simple dichotomy. Mr Peters actually does not do this, though there are plenty who do- and certainly, some approaches to the give-and-take become little more than power struggles and a great deal of 'taking,' usually by one side. Yet even in those- such as the great European colonial projects- there is still a lot of local semi-autonomy and even voluntary integration.

What does this mean for current globalization? Mr Peters suggests that if projects such as democratic governance are going to function in many places, we must be aware of local needs and identity: this is very true. And I would suggest that the ancient process of give-and-take, resistance and integration, will continue. I doubt that this will always, or even often, lead to a massive rectification of local identity against the outside world, against the 'other.' It will certainly happen sometimes, but it is not guaranteed in any situation- and differnt localities have different approaches and traditions regarding their interaction with the other.

But then, history and the interpretation of it is never simple. Which is what makes it often tragic, often surprising (even in a good way), and always fascinating.

Thoughts on Irony and Sincerity

2006-09-02T23:50:00.000-05:00

I am an ironic person. I've been resorting to sarcasm and dry humour ever since I can remember. I suspect it has something to do with my having always been the shortest and least athletic boy in elementary school- one learns certain methods of equalizing one's circumstances. That includes making insults. I suppose I discovered at some point that I could insult some people with sarcastic remarks and they wouldn't pick them up. Which precluded them from retaliating, as one must be aware of the strike to retaliate.

In being ironic and sarcastic, I am quite in conjunction with contemporary culture. One needn't look far to find the sense that for many, there is nothing left to do in the postmodern world but make fun of things and go around being ironic and self-referential. This comes perhaps as a defensive reflex in the face of a world that ceases to possess meaning or value. If the world is without actual meaning or value then the natural reaction is one of loss and emptiness. As a defense we make fun of the meaningless world in all its manifestations- many of which are admittedly very easy to make fun of. But in order to shield ourselves from the entirety of the world we must launch sarcastic assaults on everthing, from birth to death to everything and everyone in between. Hence the proliferation of endlessly sarcastic and ironic culture and art.

And so we go on using irony and sarcasm as a sort of defensive measure, a 'coping' device, whether in the face of personal setbacks and struggles or a breakdown of worldview (or all of the above together). Which is perfectly understandable. The problematic bit comes in when we are reduced to nothing buy making fun of things, when sincerity is completely stripped and the world becomes a house of mirrors of ironic discourse on one item after another, with no base of meaning or value in sight. I don't go quite that far, but I find myself indulging in sarcasm when it's not appropriate- and again, often as way of getting in insults.

So what is the place of sarcasm and irony? Well, one of the first things to be noted is the place of irony and dry humour in the Bible. It's all over the place, from St. Paul telling some of his oppononents to go castrate themselves to the abundance of dryly humoured puns in the Old Testament. We may extract the virtue of irony, sarcasm, satire and such here: they are best used on the offensive, not the defensive. Evil should be mocked- laugh at the devil, said Martin Luther. But in order for irony and such to be virtuous and truly effective, they must have something behind them. They must have a solidly placed sincerity, grounded in meaning and value.

There are signs of hope, of return to sincerity, in contemporary culture and art. The recently-released indie film Little Miss Sunshine, for example, while quite funny and laced with plenty of irony and satire, is remarkably sincere at heart. The film deals with a dysfunctional family, which is a classic send-up for sarcasm and satire. Yet in the end the family is affirmed and retains a sincere core, even managing to ask- and refrain from subsequently lampooning- serious questions about life and meaning.

The- sort of- resurgence in interest in folk music, bluegrass, and that sort of thing, is, I think, another manifestation of a desire to return to sincerity. The increased popularity of indie folk-pop musician Sufjan Stevens, among many, is evidence of a desire for art that has meaning and refuses to simply deliver endless sendups of life and being. Sufjan's ongoing project to record albums for all fifty states is a good example. There is something ironic in talking about recording that many albums, and there is irony and self-referential material in Sufjan, but the core is sincerity, particular in the material concerning the states he's covered so far. Instead of mocking rural places or decaying cities or suburbs his music seeks to draw out the meaning and beauty in those things- not tear them apart for entertainment value.

I could relate other examples in various aspects of art and culture: not necesarily 'mainstream' culture, as defined by what gets played on cable and (most) radio, but what is out there and being listened to, read, and viewed, by at least some people in contemporary culture. Those of us who look upon the (seemingly) prevailing currents of culture should not lose hope; nor should we ourselves retreat behind the same sorts of barriers- which is something I struggle with. St. Augustine said many centuries ago, 'You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.' This remains true: people sense behind their claims of emptiness and endless mirrors the existence of something or maybe even Someone. It is the job of those who know that Someone to provide sincere and authentic expressions of Him to culture. And in so doing there is nothing wrong with the careful, offensive use of irony and satire, so long as it has grounding in sincerity and meaning.

Such Things Are Wont To Rebound

2006-08-30T20:53:00.000-05:00

He who by Tao purposes to help a ruler of men will oppose all conquest by force of arms; for such things are wont to rebound. Where armies are, thorns and brambles grow. The raising of a great host is followed by a year of dearth. Therefore a good general effects his purpose and then stops; he does not take further advantage of his victory.

Fulfils his purpose and does not glory in what he has done; fulfils his purpose and does not boast of what he has done; fulfils his purpose, but takes no pride in what he has done; fulfils his purpose, but only as a step that could not be avoided.

Fulfils his purpose, but without violence; for what has a time of vigour also has a time of decay. This is against Tao,and what is against Tao will soon perish.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 30, by Lao Tzu

A Saint For Peace

2006-08-28T20:33:00.000-05:00

A brother at Scetis committed a grave sin. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you." So he got up and went. He took an old basket, filled it with sand, and carried it on his back. The others came out to meet him and said to him, "Father, what is this?" The old man said to him, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I come to judge the sins of another." When they heard this they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

St. Moses the Ethiopian's feast day is today. He stands for repentance, for the healing of the self from violence and division: which we all need so badly. And out of the experience of this healing he lets us understand how ridiculous it is to pass judgment on the other who is undergoing the conflict of the divided self in sin. We are all of us part to the breaking of the world in our sin, in our own division, and to condemn another means we would have to irrevocably condemn ourselves. But into the broken divided and sinful world we see grace in the form of Christ Jesus and manifest in the saints: grace that forgives and heals. St. Moses is a resplendent example of this grace, that can take the 'worst' sort of sinner, steeped in the directions of violence and deceit and evil, and make him into a vessel of peace and grace and love.

And that is cause- the only solid cause- for hope in a world in which brokeness and violent division are very much in evidence. St. Moses shows us that the only true path to peace passes through change in our hearts and hence into the world, through the grace of the Prince of Peace, Christ our God. This is a peace that transcends class, race, and all the rest, because Christ is not for this group or that group, for the good people only, but for all humanity, bloodied and broken as we come.

O all-blest and righteous Father Moses, you drove away the passions' darkness, being richly illumined with light divine; and with your vigilant prayers, you withered up the wanton pride of the flesh, and mounted on high to the citadel above, where do you continually entreat Christ God to grant great mercy to us.

The Drunk and the Constable

2006-08-27T12:42:00.000-05:00

A man whose job it was to keep the peace
Beat up a drunk, who fought for his release
And cried: 'It's you who's tippled too much wine;
Your rowdiness is ten times worse than mine-
Who's causing this disturbance, you or me?
But yours is drunkeness that men can't see;
Leave me alone! Let justice do its worst-
Enforce the law and beat yourself up first!'

Farid ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-Tayr)

Roadside Gospel (Maranatha)

2006-08-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

Legs of the notsky looming over
Dreaming things wings clipped long past
Sings like the asphalt boiled by summer
Legs concrete crawling heavy they
Say: TRUST JESUS, in the fast-pass rush
Scrawled out in urgent hand
(Urgency! Urgency! Awake!)
Drive-by gospeling grabbing
Hitch-hike pick me up on the margin
Of the thinning-out universe
Bruised heavy trucks pounding
Fumes choke, try to fill my lungs

And I see the Second Coming looming
And spreading out from under the overpass
The words the silent unstone says
Breathing into the dressed out dead

Kicking Television, Or, the Wretchedness of Popular American Culture (Not A New Theme But)

2006-08-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

I don't normally watch much television outside of the occasional news broadcast, which is as much to pick up on currents in American news reporting as it is for the sake of the news (or lack thereof) itself. I will occasionally watch Law & Order and a few other shows, but not very often. This isn't really out of any high moral or aesthetic standard; instead it's more because I don't like being interupted by commercials. I suppose growing up with the Internet has gotten me used to information and entertainment practically on demand. I would rather get my news from Google News, and if I want to watch a movie I'll get a DVD.

Anyway, I have been watching a good bit of television over the past couple of days as a result of being marooned in our dorm lobby awaiting students needing to be checked in. Unpleasant experience. American television really is about as bad as they say it is. There is little artistic content and even less that might be considered redemptive; most of it is either hyper-sexual or hyper-commercial or both at once. Irony, sarcasm, (as ends in themselves) and cheap titillation: par for course. Quite frankly, after watching several straight hours I begin to understand how a non-American from a more traditional culture could, if exposed to adequate quantities of American or American-inspired television see our culture as nothing more than a cesspit. It's quite depressing.

I still maintain that there is more to American culture, as manifest in it regional variations, that is edifying and worth keeping. There's more than wars and Wal-Mart; music beyond MTV; film and literature beyond soft-core pornography. But watching our television you'd be hard pressed to discover that.

The Image of Man Deified

2006-08-08T23:04:00.000-05:00

In general, absolute states on earth are the image of man deified, of anti-Christianity, they are the incarnation of the spirit of the prince of this world, from whom it is said: “and to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority” (Revelation 13:2). Even though in the days when the Revelation was written, this apparently referred to the Roman Empire as the image of state absolutism, today this may be applied to all varieties of this principle, to Bolshevism and racism (without even mentioning Japanese pagan deification of the Emperor and others).

“And the whole earth followed the beast with wonder. Men worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast saying, ‘Who is like beast, And who can fight against it?’” (13:4). It is difficult to add anything to the simplicity of these words, which may be applied to the totality of world history. Today’s tsarism, both the Russian and the Germanic type, in their own way are new and almost unexpected parallels of Roman absolutism, as is its victorious self-affirmation, which leads entire peoples which are under its power to a state of madness.

– Commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John, by Fr. Sergi Boulgakov, Paris, 1944

Summer Ended

2006-08-06T18:38:00.000-05:00

Well, the peach season wound up, coinciding nicely with the resumption of school. I'm going to miss my summer job, though Mr Joe (the orchard's owner) asked if I would come help him with various odd jobs in the orchard every now and then on Saturdays, my school schedule permitting.

I am back at school now, having moved my handful of things into my new room, which has a nice view:

This is my final year at William Carey University (a university now, having advanced in prestige I suppose over the summer); I will, Lord willing and if the creek don't rise (it's been known to do that in this part of the world) graduate with a B. A. in History come May. From there- I've no definite plans, more of a general sense of direction. I would like to learn Arabic, and anyway want to visit the Middle East and spend some time there. My primary center of interest in history lies in the medieval interaction of East and West, particularly as manifest by the interaction/collision of Eastern Christendom and the Islamic World: anything from Nestorians among the Uighurs in China to the Crusades to the Ottomans- pretty broad range.

I will eventually attend graduate school, but I'd rather take a couple of years off to travel. I particularly want to start learning Arabic, which isn't exactly an easy language. To do so I'd prefer to be in an immersive environment- I've found that such environments are much more conductive to learning a language than studying it away from the people who speak it.

In order to finance such a venture I'm thinking about doing some English-as-a-second-language teaching. If I can- and I'm quite serious- I would love to figure out a way to do farm work in a Middle Eastern or East Asian country.

My mother thinks I'm rather crazy- I probably am!- and wonders why I can't just stay in the States- preferably here in Mississippi- and get my Masters in American History or something. My father is rather more understanding- he has the adventure disease as well. He joined the National Guard years ago, and, since transfering to the Air National Guard, has traveled around the world on annual training. He's being deployed to a combat zone for the first time in May, to a base north of Baghdad, shortly before his fifty-first birthday. My mother is thrilled, of course, but I guess has managed to be reconciled, if not exactly understand, the mentality that leads people to do things like that. Before she married my dad, she had left Mississippi but a few times. My maternal grandparents have lived in the same little community all their lives, and have never had any desire to go elsewhere (it's a chore getting them to come the two hours south to our house!).

Yet my uncle, my mom's brother, has the adventure disease: joined the Army, went into Military Intelligence, ran around Somalia and other fun places getting shot at, jumped out of airplanes, all that. This duality between the desire to stay at home, avoid adventure and such, and those of us who are happiest on an airplane off to another country or dodging bullets, seems to run right through my family on both sides. I don't know which side is 'better'; I feel longings in both ways. Part of me wants to stay in Mississippi, inherit my grandpa's farm, and raise corn and cattle and watch the sun set over the bottomlands. The other half of me dreams of sunrises over the Andes and the Atlas Mountains, wants to ride the steppes of Central Asia, and so on.

Well, anyway, enough personal introspection. We'll see what works out. I've found that life rarely goes according to plan; so I've tried to stop making so many...

South of the Clouds

2006-07-28T13:48:00.000-05:00

The American Museum of Natural History has an interesting exhibition devoted to photographs taken by residents of Northwest Yunnan Province, China: Voices From South of the Clouds. (Yunnan means 'south of the clouds' in Chinese).

Pope Benedict on Peace

2006-07-26T21:05:00.000-05:00

Via Sarx: Our Lord Has Conquered With a Love Capable of Going to Death:

Therefore, what we do to those who suffer, we do to the Last Judge of our life. This is important: At this moment we can take his victory to the world, taking part actively in his charity. Today, in a multicultural and multireligious world, many are tempted to say: "For peace in the world, among religions, among cultures, it is better not to speak too much of what is specific to Christianity, that is, of Jesus, of the Church, of the sacraments. Let us be content with what can be more or less common .…"

But it is not true. Precisely at this time, a time of great abuse of the name of God, we have need of the God who overcomes on the cross, who does not conquer with violence, but with his love. Precisely at this time we have need of the Face of Christ to know the true Face of God and so be able to take reconciliation and light to this world. For this reason, together with love, with the message of love, we must also take the testimony of this God, of God's victory, precisely through the nonviolence of his cross.

Remember the Alamo

2006-07-24T15:37:00.000-05:00

A Short Story

We drove through Chicago Plantation (it didn’t look much like Chicago) parting the rain curtain drawing around the cotton fields and shotgun houses all turned to one big muddy sea. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, late in July, hot, and I was yawning and asking how much further Greenville was which was where we were going to see a movie. Twenty miles my father promised with that sort of promise I had heard many times before and learned to interpret. I looked out the window at the rows and rows and rows of cotton drowning floating moodily in the rain and found my eyes closing down slowly, opening slowly: more rows of cotton swimming in the sea, flat as a tabletop with brand new linoleum on it. I fell asleep finally subdued by the rhythm of the relentless Delta. I woke up in Greenville. It was four o’clock and the rain had stopped but the streets were still streams just starting to sizzle off into steam, as the sun shoved off the clouds and starting filling the world again with its heat. It was July after all.

We were on our way back to the Coast, driving home after visiting our kinfolk in Memphis which was a town I did not like, maybe most of all because to reach it we drove for hours upon monotone monochrome hours through the Delta. I think my father felt as if it would be a good thing to make it up to me a little bit for having to crawl through the Delta to Memphis and back, so he had promised to stop in Greenville on the way back, at the movie theatre where we would watch John Wayne’s new picture, The Alamo, which was about him as Davy Crockett going to Texas (a place I had never been but figured it had lots of cattle, cowboys, and big mountains, and not much else) where he killed a lot of Mexicans before they broke in and killed all the white people and killed John Wayne-Davy Crockett last. I knew all that because my father told me while we were driving out of Memphis. He said it was a ‘historical picture’ which was important, as important as going to the picture-shows can be (he had studied history a good bit at the university and still liked to talk about it). The big battle was in an old church, the Alamo, and the Mexicans (after lots of them being killed) ended up killing all the Texans- who were white mostly. ‘Even John Wayne?’ (I already knew about John Wayne pretty well.) ‘Even John Wayne. Everybody. But the Texans kept fighting and they whipped old Santa Anna, place called San Jacinto, killed a bunch more Mexicans and Santa Anna tried to run off but they caught him and he gave up then and there; Texas was free.’

That was what my father said though I wasn’t sure exactly who Santa Anna was or where San Jacinto was. That last place wasn’t in the movie at any rate. ‘After the Alamo the Texans, whenever they were in a battle, would always yell “Remember the Alamo! Remember the Alamo!” They were yelling it at San Jacinto when they caught old Santa Anna and then Texas had its independence.’ I had said that phrase to myself as we were scooting across the table-top land; I imagined the brooding white horizontality-defying churches to be the Alamo and the little fringe of trees ringing the churches were Texans fighting the Mexicans- which were the sprawling cotton plants out in the fields around. ‘Remember the Alamo.’ I decided I would. It was important. However I wondered if maybe there wasn’t something sort of wrong about fighting in a church. I knew if I did it I would get into trouble. But maybe when you’re being attacked by lots of Mexicans it’s alright. I wasn’t sure.

We pulled up to the theatre and I stepped deliberately down into the mud puddle under my door and grinned happy to be out of the car to be almost out of the Delta almost inside the movie theatre. The puddle wasn’t very deep and I splashed once and jumped up onto the sidewalk and yelled ‘Remember the Alamo!’ A Negro man was standing near the door across from me and I guess I startled him because he turned around and scowled at me. I just grinned some more. He turned back around. Next to him was little boy, maybe his son or nephew or something. He also turned around and walked towards me. I said hello and maybe we can have a battle: I’ll be John Wayne and you can be a Mexican. But he didn’t seem to like the deal even though I figured it was fair: I killed him then he killed me. But he went back to stand beside the man who had scowled at me. They were buying tickets and soon moved inside. My father and I went up to the other ticket window, bought our tickets from the bored looking skinny boy inside, and went in, out of the emerging big brightness into a musty (still rainy smelling) dark with a few yellow lights. The boy and the man went in too, through the door marked Colored Only.

We sat down. I loved going to the movies: the oozing darkness of the big square room that was so deliciously cool. And then the movie: Motion, Sound, Excitement! I had never been to Texas but sometimes I thought I had and it was anyway better than Texas would turn out to be I would decide later (much later). The movie was a suspension of distance and time, but it wasn’t the same as being there, which was comfortable. You don’t move during the moving picture show; the picture moves for you. I liked that back then. It was easier. Sometimes I still prefer it.
I huddled up against my father and whispered, ‘Why can’t we go sit up there?’ and pointed up behind us to the balcony where the boy and man had gone, under the door marked Colored Only and up the stairs. But he only shook his head, scowled, and didn’t say anything. I didn’t exactly understand except that Negroes colored nigger people (I was never exactly sure which to use when) had to sit up there and we sat down here which was alright because we all watched the same movie I decided. Still I wanted to sit up there sometime. But they wouldn’t let me (I didn’t know who exactly they were or why they wouldn’t but didn’t want to ask either).

The movie started and sure enough John Wayne-Davy Crockett was tough and grim under that coonskin hat (I thought it looked sort of silly but didn’t say anything: it was John Wayne after all). He went to Texas to help a bunch of other grim tough men fight the Mexicans. And soon they ended up in the old church, the Alamo, which I discovered was different from the little tree-guarded churches in the cotton fields. For one thing this place had walls and cannon. And it wasn’t all church: there were other buildings too, which I decided made things better for it was less a violation of the- back then I didn’t have a word for it exactly- sanctuary of the church.

It wasn’t long before my favorite part, the fighting, started. Then something strange happened. I yelled ‘Remember the Alamo!’ when the shooting started but someone in the upstairs (Colored Only I remembered) booed. Then another person booed and it was just as John Wayne-Davy Crockett shot a Mexican. I didn’t know what to think. Why were they booing? The movie kept on. There was more booing while the Texans were winning. Soon the Texans were caught in the Alamo and they decided to stay and fight to the death. I wasn’t sure if that was such a good idea. Of course I knew it really wasn’t because soon they would all be dead, and I sort of wondered if that outcome- all of them getting killed- really helped things. The Mexicans came and yes lots died but more came and now they had ladders they lifted and while the Texan flag was shot up more and more the Mexicans came. More and more Texans started dying and they fell over with the Mexicans who were still falling. Now the upstairs people were cheering, as the Mexicans swarmed down off the walls into the middle ground, more Texans falling, dead. And then it was over. They- the blacks niggers negroes coloured people- were cheering loudly now. I didn’t know why. I suspected there was a reason: maybe they were really Mexicans? But they weren’t. Were Mexicans colored? I decided they must be if in a different way.

I liked the movie alright, even with the booing and cheering that didn’t match unless the Mexicans were colored (though maybe that wasn’t all there was to it). We came outside into the now lessened big brightness of late afternoon. The people had come down from the downstairs and some were standing about outside laughing and grinning. I grinned at them and said ‘Remember the Alamo!’ but they just laughed and grinned. We were starting to get into our car when a white man came out of the theatre. I think he was drunk from the way he was walking and talking. He came up to the tallest Negro man in the group and just punched him in the stomach and starting cussing and yelling, about the movie and their cheering and booing. The crowd moved back a little and we watched from our car (neither of us saying: just watching): the tall Negro man looked around once or twice then stepped up to the drunken white cussing man and punched him back. The white man fell to the sidewalk, just like that. He got up and another man pushed him back, just barely like I was pushing my little brother back or something, hardly trying. The man fell back down, crawled back a bit and pulled himself up. Nobody touched him again but they didn’t need to because he walked off not saying anything holding his nose which was bleeding. He didn’t try to give any more trouble.

The crowd left, still grinning and laughing a little. I didn’t really feel sorry for the white man. I didn’t approve of the booing and all but figured there was something behind it that would explain things. But the white man should have known better. He was pretty drunk and besides there was only one of him and a lot of them. He should have known better.

Industry & Agriculture

2006-07-19T15:08:00.000-05:00

From NPR: Arrival of Industry Brings Suffering to Countryside

Chinese estimates say up to 40 million farmers have been removed from their land. Song Lingui is one of those farmers.

Four years ago, the local government took his land and sold it to the chemical plant. He was given some compensation, but he says it was not enough.

"Our land was so good. We could grow crops on it throughout the year," Song says. "In the past, we could live off our land, but now that's not possible. "

One of the first things that struck me while riding from Kunming, Yunnan, south to Honghe Prefecture, was the seemingly endless industrial sprawl crawling out from Kunming, and the overwhelming grayness of the land that wasn't industrialized or crowded with housing. As I would discover, the sprawl around Kunming (which I would imagine is small compared to that of cities in more populated and industrialized provinces) is a far cry from the beauty of the Chinese countryside outside of industrialization.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to over-romanticize China's agriculture and the lives of the people who till the land. Yet it remains that for many, many Chinese, particularly those still making a living from farming, the land is something that dwells very deeply inside of them, something that only gives them food and income, but is beautiful and charged with sacred significance. Farming land is a very important anchor of tradition in a land where old ways and traditions are still important.

When I talked with Chinese students about their home villages (I was in a largely rural region where most students hailed from rural villages) I was struck with how much of an identification they still had- even as young, modern university students- with the land of their homes, with the rivers and hills and farms. Nearly all desired to return to their hometowns if possible. While the Chinese tend to be reserved- for good reason- with criticisms of current affairs in China, I heard from many students laments over the state of the environment in their homes. One student told me sorrowfully how when he was young the river beside his village was living and full of fish; now, in the wake of factories along its banks nothing can survive in it. It is dead. Things like this matter deeply to many Chinese, and I believe that many are thinking deeply about them and do not wish to see their land disappear under an unstoppable tide of industrialization.

How to prevent this and maintain economic progress: I don't know all- many even- answers, but I believe that many Chinese are considering such questions deeply. Whether anything can be done remains to be seen, though many more are acting and speaking up. Perhaps change will come- not in revolutions or overnight- that will extend not only to farmers but to all of China, that will lead it into a future free of Communism, free of ruthless state explotation in favour of no-holds-barred capitalism: a free and beautiful China. I do not- I refuse to believe- that such a dream is impossible.

Comedy & Tragedy

2006-07-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

"Comedy is all that’s left for us now in the West because tragedy demands conscience, regret, repentance and things like that. We don’t have that any more. We have ‘Kill ’em and let God sort ’em out.’ That’s nothing but raw comedy. One of the things I’ve learned from working in the theater is that events would take place that some people would laugh at and some people would gasp at. Some people would be horrified at the same thing that other people found amusing. It made me realize that there really isn’t a line between comedy and tragedy. Both things are happening at once in life at the same moment. Tragedy depends on whether or not you feel like there’s some redemption to be had from the moment. If you feel that, it’s tragedy. If you don’t, you perceive it as comedy."

T-Bone Burnett

Collateral Damage

2006-07-16T13:02:00.000-05:00

From Letter Apart.

Lauds, After the Storm:

2006-07-10T13:18:00.000-05:00

(On St. John the Baptist's Day)

i.

We awoke in the up-sprung morning-
Outside air of after-rain filled our heads
Flooded under the oaks and pines
Slow paced nodding breathing in
The smell: memory condensed
Of mornings beyond count past
Under new rain-washed skies
Soil singing in its fresh-found embrace-
And all the things only the smelling of can contain
(How much deeper than words some things work
Unlocked inside of us unspoiled yet)
Rain-loosened lauds this, seeping from the soil
Gathering to God and speaking clear, distinct
Memory of Him, too, soft sudden immediacy.

ii.

So then the tractor rattled and hummed, it also
Woken again, noticing nothing new,
We lurched slow and settled
Into the broken rows of trees
Teeth set on edge but
Lines softened scattered out
In the blurring spilling-out first light.
Over the sand-hills and brimming floodplain
Tallahala Creek over beyond the tree-cloaked brim
(This too a memory though
The signifiers are long fled from their sign)
Comes the horizon-stretched broad flaming orb
Sweeping the sky of last night’s memory
The sudden burst, the flare:
Arrival in blaze of glory, terrible and strong,
Beautiful, angel choir surrounding
Summoning, the dawn.

iii.

Rain-drops clinging, filtering the grass and trees-
The universe condensed in each luminescent globe-
Water, type of heaven, harbinger of life-
And of death-
(Both in each speaking to the other)
The fruit waits heavy with rejoicing for
The storm has seen the breaking of the drought
The silent stony prayers of the land
At last returned and now echoed back again
But:

We look down the rows and shake our heads-
For there is always loss in gain
Joy is more rapt, perhaps, for the sorrow
In which it embowers itself
The seed within bitter flesh and pulp.
The rains come their bright draughted wine:
Sometimes the cup is downfall, and joy.
Toppled, brought low
Are ten, fifteen trees- we count, the tractor grumbles on:
Cutting our losses we continue
In the work of the day, the work of our hands
Confluence of times and seasons
And we recall that day last fall
The bitter too-hot autumn
That brought these trees down
Sank low into their hearts, cut to the roots:
The roots weakened, the tree
Will not long stand.

And I wonder: are my roots well-set
Unrattled by storm and displacement?
Is there some strong cup yet for me to drink
Sorrow and joy mingled, equal measure?

iv.

But no matter, this. We are not dismayed
For the lauds still rise in the midst of
What falls apart-
There is still room for rising in the collapse.

Away in the clean-washed distance
Above the fig-tree fronted barn
The last clouds are smoldering off
Final tracery of the fire and ice
That from them was lately sprung
(The fire we did not feel, and as for the ice:
It was, despite our fears, of little consequence.
We were blessed.)
Streams off, smoke from the burning-down
Underground coal-mine fires in the skies
Their ovens banked and cooling
Overhead the egrets sharp-reliefed
Flung, snow-pure arrows from the rising sun
Burnish across the sky
Moving as in a waking dream
I think they sleep upon the outcast sun-beams
To regather on the waking world when their roost
Rises to roof again the fields and floods.

v.

We fill the gun-metaled buckets
As the heat slowly wraps around us
Briefly fled, brooding now out from the sun.
All the world rises awake up alive (even with its losses)
And I think:
What is it to be, alive? To love?
How can we- riders on rattling tractors
And lonely severing roads and highways-
Be taken with the joy-laden lauds floating
Over the morning ground
The bright paling-piece praise rising
To the not-so-distant throne
Of God, His remembrance brimming in leaf and stock:
But I do not pretend to know
The route to cull out the words I need
Some songs are sung
Without the roil and heave of tongue-formed word
And on after-rain hymn-heavy dawns
The knowing of the thing seeps into you
As the drought breaks water flooding in.
It is then that you know, you love
And rejoice in the midst of shattered tree
Withal within you the remembering:
Imminent Return, and all-things Resurrection, Remaking.

Morningtime

2006-07-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

A Handful of Reviews

2006-07-06T20:30:00.000-05:00

During the summer I usually read a good deal of fiction, along with some non-fiction. This summer I have been working through the novels of Salman Rushdie and Walker Percy- granted, not two writers one usually takes together, though both are excellent, and I shall perhaps comment upon them later.

While browsing in the used book section at an antique store (antique stores can sometimes turn up pretty decent books at low prices), I ran across A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, which I bought not particularly knowing anything about V.S. Naipaul or having read anything by him before that I can recall. The novel turned out to be quite good, however. Set in post-colonial Zaire (though the reader is never given the name of the country or places within it) it deals powerfully and provactatively with post-colonial issues: the collapse of the colonial order, the experience of independence, rebuilding, engagement with the crossing of European and African culture, and then a second collapse into chaos and violence.

He deals with a lot of issues particular to post-colonial literature, but does so in a unique manner. Salim, the narrator of this first-person narrative, is African-Arab, and hence at once an outsider and an insider. His situation in the post-colonial world is even more ambiguous than the other foreigners in his town, for he is an exile from a place that has ceased to exist: his community, foreign and not-foreign, has ceased to exist on the coast, and his place on the continent is precarious and uncertain. The novel is primarily concerned with his experience, the events and developments of the world unfolding often only as background, until they intersect directly with Salim's life.

Naipaul raises some difficult issues, particularly concerning the transition of traditional, tribal Africa throught the colonial experience into some sort of independence in collision- collusion- confusion?- with the modern age. He does not paint a rosey picture; the novel concludes with loss and destruction more bitter than the loss and destruction at the end of the colonial era. There is no offer of a possible hope, that civilization (itself an ambiguous term) will eventualy rememerge, the violence and disorder be quelled.

Turning to film, I recieved in the mail today Palestinian film-maker Hany Abu-Assad's most recent film, Paradise Now. Following two best friends as they seek to carry out a suicide mission in Tel Aviv, this isn't a particularly easy film to watch or arrive at a judgment about. Abu-Assad seeks to examine the suicide bombers and the organization behind them from within; he does an incredible job connecting the viewer with the two men, as they struggle with issues that are both generic and personal.

Both men contend that their fight is for freedom from oppression, equality, and an end to an unjust occupation: the official rhetoric. How they ultimately respond to this belief, how much they actually believe it, and what happens when their insistence on violence as the only means is questioned, makes for a very compelling film. Yet besides this 'offical' rhetoric and reasons are personal ones, and each man's personal psychology. In trying to get inside the internal, personal motivation of a suicide bomber Abu-Assad echoes Salman Rushdie's latest offering, Shalimar the Clown, in which the chief antagonist associates himself with radical Islamic terrorism, espouses its doctrines, yet is really motivated by intense personal private concerns. Abu-Assad suggests motivation that consists perhaps more evenly of both.

The film itself is excellently done: the characters are believable and compelling, and the story develops with a decent pace and enough- believable- developments and turns to make it interesting. The cinematography is well done, particularly considering that the filming locations were occasionaly subject to gunfire, mine explosions, and the like.

Ultimately Paradise Now shows the emptiness of terrorism as a political tool; at the same time it humanizes those caught up in it. It also does the comendable job of reminding us that not every Palestinian is in favour of violence, and that some approach violence with an ambiguity and uncertainty. Often times in such conflicts there is the development of a second-self in people who cannot help being aligned with one side or another; they try to act from within a second-self that they hope can be detached from the actions and compliances they are forced into. Some of this tension is hinted at by Abu-Assad. Finally there is the role of religion: Islam is certainly a presence in the film, partially as motivation, but more as a background element. We are led to wonder in the depth of true belief in the primary actors, and how much it motivates them is never fully clear.

Overal a good film, though I am not certain how fully Abu-Assad details the motivations of the suicide bombers- and this is certainly a film from the Palestinian point of view, which has both its advantages and weaknesses. Yet it manages fairly well to examine a very complex situation and convey some measure of understanding, while deftly undercutting violence and ultimately appealing for peace.

The Land

2006-07-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

This summer I opted not to take any classes, but to instead stay at home in Jones County, MS, and find a job, which is always an esteemable and useful thing for college students to do, I suppose. I had thought about working in a restaraunt or some sort of office job, but instead heard about a chance to work on a local farm that mainly grows peaches. Well, despite growing up in rural and semi-rural places, I have never worked on a farm, and aside from piddling on my grandparents' farm and our occasional vegetable gardens, had no experience with that sort of thing. Nonetheless I decided what the heck: I might not get another chance to do that sort of work.

So I took the job. We start out at six in the morning, picking peaches or peas, depending on which is ready, or do various odd jobs around the farm and orchard. We sell our produce at the farm, which is on one of the more heavily used thoroughfares in our county. It can be hard sweaty work once the sun comes up high enough, by midmorning, to heat things up. Lately the humidity has been high, even at sunrise- that stiffling thickness of air (it doesn't have to be hot outside temperature wise to be hot and humid) that clings to you and soaks through. The peaches have been smaller than usual, thanks to the hurricane which stressed them extensively, and then a prolonged drought that really began after the hurricane.

But I have enjoyed working there. Granted, waking up every morning before light- something I'm not accustomed to- can get a little old, but I find myself now feeling out of place if, on a day off, I wake up later, after sunrise. Then working out on the land, among living things, as the sun is climbing up and burning through the fog out over the bottomlands down below (the farm is up on a fairly substantial ridge)- is beautiful, and calming. Every morning has its own poetic aura to it (even the heavy humid ones). Gathering and selling the produce is rewarding: you tend the trees, then pick the fruit and sort it out yourself; you get to see both the work and its end. Gradually you begin to feel a connection to the land, to the living things you work with, and the soil and sky around.

My greatgrandmother, who is still living (she is almsot 89), kept extensive vegetable gardens until last year; her health has declined a great deal lately and only that has kept her indoors. She has often told me how much she loves to garden, to work in the fields planting, tending, and picking. She would be out working in her peas and corn right now if she could, not because she has to, but becasue she genuinely loves the land and its fruit, has that connection down in her blood with it. In my few days of farm work I have begun to somewhat understand that love, the satisfaction and poetry, the contentment of having earth under your fingernails and sweat on your brow and the smell of grass and corn and soil in your nose, in your blood.

There is something sacramental about work, and I suspect it runs even deeper when that work is with the land and with living things. We were created as tenders of a garden, made from the soil of the earth, and that connection still beats down within us somewhere. In our industrialized (post-industrialized almost for some of us) world however it is easy to sever that connection. I could elaborate but there is no need to: the land, the soil, free air and water and trees, are things mostly foreign to us. They are not part of what we do, how we live. There is something sad about that loss, though I do not imagine there is much we can do to reverse it. Nor do I suggest that a 'return to the land' is practical or desirable for most of us. Yet the loss is still, I think, a loss. It is one that is increasingly global, as farmers are driven off their land by economic forces far beyond their control; or they grow tired of agriculture (it is much harder in developing-world countries!) and seek the cities for jobs. Sometimes their situation grows worse, sometimes better. Either way something is lost, as more farms are either consolidated or abandoned.

The farm I work at is really a labour of love, with precious little real profit: so are most small, non-mega farms in this country. Suburbia is already creeping up around the peach orchards, strange as that is to contemplate in rural Jones County. I wonder how long such places will survive? If- or perhaps when- they are all gone there will be a genuine loss, a loss of some of the poetry and life and beauty in the world.

Thoughts On Southerness

2006-07-02T13:57:00.000-05:00

The Fourth of July is still something of an ambiguous holiday within of the Southern consciousness. The Fourth of July, 1863 sealed the fate of the Confederacy as Vicksburg surrendered and (not as important but perhaps more powerful symbolicaly and in our memory) Lee began his retreat back into Northern Virginia. The War was not over; it would drag on for another year and a half, but almost any hope the Confederacy had of survival was dashed on the loess bluffs above the Mississippi.

But the ambiguity of the Fourth of July does not lie wholly in the memory of those days, or in the fact that not a few of us here in the South are descended from men who fired upon the Star-Spangled Banner, in the not-so-distant past (in the Southern memory anyway.) There is the fact of the seperate, in many ways, trajectory of the Southern experience from the wider 'American' experience, and this falls upon all Southerners, black or white. My ancestors arrived on the shores of the Chesapeake and the Carolina coast without dreams of freedom and proper worship or anything of that sort; they carried dreams of tobacco cultivation, of wresting new money from the wilderness. And they sought to carry out this dream employing the unpaid labour of West Africans, who were forcibly integrated into the Southern Experience. We were not the noble Pilgrims, we were not zealous idealists out to forge a new society in the New World. Some stayed along the coast and built up wealth in the emerging slave-labour system; others forged off into the wilderness and fought and built with their own hands and cared littled for legality or ethics in their relations with the original inhabitants of the mountains. (Yet how many would marry Native Americans and no one among them was offended?)

I had one ancestor who ended up fighting- and getting killed- in the American Revolution, at Kings Mountains on the North-South Carolina line. I doubt whether he had ever read Common Sense, knew anything much about Declerations and Congresses, or cared. He was probably angry at the British for their threats against the mountaineers who were pushing the British-established boundaries of Appalachia. Had he survived Kings Mountain in all probability it would have been the end of his fighting for the Revolution; he would have gone home and grown his corn, drank his whiskey, and raised his children.

Gradually my ancestors left the mountains of the Carolinas, pushed across Alabama, and, with the siezure of the remaining Choctaw and Chickasaw lands of Mississippi (treaties were made to be broken), settled upon the prairie land and adjoining red clay hills. We have, by and large, remained, through war and depression, social upheaval and economic progress. Slavery came and went but it is always in the background, the burden of history on all of us. We have fired upon the Star Spangled Banner, and we have in turn bled for it in later wars; we have seen the same flag fly over slavery (and we cried freedom! liberty! long live the republic! while tightening the chains), and have seen it fight slavery. Yet that one war remains the War and the old battled-flag is still as ubiquitous as the Stars and Stripes. We are Americans but we are also Southerners: this is a land that has known defeat, slavery, entrenched poverty, all those things that America is not supposed to be. I suspect that such an experience, while tragic, lamentable, is in some ways a good thing: we have seen the world, all of us, white and black, from a perspective that allows us to see differently from the rest of the country, to lend something unique, a corrective perhaps.

Of course the South is a place that is still changing: driving back from Winston County, MS, I noticed that one of the highways between here and there has been named the Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner Memorial Highway, the three civil rights workers murdered outside of Philadelphia. It has not been that long since the murders themselves; even a few years ago naming a highway after them would still be risque. The South is changing in other ways: I picked up several Spanish-language radio stations on my way back; Thursday I played soccer with a group of Latino immigrants some of whom have been in Mississippi for a few years, some a few months. They are still a small minority, but their presence is noticeable. I am sure the number of Latino Southerners will increase- for while many immigrant workers will return to Latin America, many will stay, and become a permanent part of the Southern Experience.

Intertext

2006-06-27T13:44:00.000-05:00

An early Coptic Orthodox liturgical mansucript written in both Coptic and Arabic:

From the Coptic Encylopedia.

Deconstructing the Cathedral

2006-06-22T09:44:00.000-05:00

Cathedrals narrate the centuries that build them. Medieval structures reflect a unified and cohesive worldview marked by symmetry. God is One, a Unity discerned in the unifying, unchanging principles of mathematics. Seeing God manifest in the underlying coherence of sacred geometry, masons felt privy to the secret knowledge of the divine architect of the universe.

Deconstructing the Cathedral, at The New Pantagruel

Textual Fragments

2006-06-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

Calligraphist, Mengzi, Yunnan, China.

Rowan Oaks, Oxford, Mississippi: Faulkner's outline of A Fable.

Seen on a bathroom door in North Mississippi.

In the Jewish Section of the Natchez City Cemetery.

Coca-Cola sign in Shonca village, Central Andes, Peru.

Chinese Muslim bakery, Mengzi.

Divorcing the Referent & The Transformation of Text

2006-06-20T17:01:00.000-05:00

I.

Our local art museum is hosting an exhibit of modernist art from the 40's through 60's that was collected by the Poindexters of New York and eventually made its way to Eastern Montana (Mr Poindexter thought that places like Eastern Montana tend to be under-represented in terms of art). Most of the paintings were abstract impressionist, though the degrees of abstract-ness varied. The exhibit was very nicely done, which has almost always been my experience with this museum.

I have never been a great 'fan' of modern art, though some of it I find myself enjoying. I can appreciate, to a certain extent, what the artist is trying to do or say. But therein lies one of the chief 'problems' I have with the modernist: the art is constructed in such a way that the meaning of the art is subsumed in the artist's private vision. Now, all art must include a certain amount of ambiguity- all human creation will be shrouded in a certain amount of uncertaintity as to its meaning, for the vision of the maker is not directly and completely communicated in his work. While I cannot concede the radical deconstruction advocated by postmodern thinkers, it remains true that no creative work- painting, literature, music- can be 'put in the dock' and asked what it means. And even the interaction of the maker cannot fully arrive at that meaning, for even in making we find ambiguity in ourselves.

Abstract- abstract at its 'pinnacle'- goes further however, in that it purposely seeks to divorce the referent from the sign at hand, so that whatever referent exists- perhaps only in the inner subconscious of the artist- is private and innacessible. It does not, I think, deny meaning to a work, and could perhaps allow for there to be some 'absolute' meaning: but one hidden in the private workings of the artist. This is profoundly problematic, for it entails a sundering of reality from the art, which implies a sort of nihilism at work, denying conjunction between the act of making and the world-as-is (though of course a complete deconstruction of such a conjunction is impossible: colour, form, shape, etc, are still elements of the world, even if highly abstracted). If all art, all making, is imitation of God, so that we become 'subcreators' as Tolkien once wrote, then the temptation of modern art is to exalt oneself alongside God, not under Him. The subcreator takes of the world-as-is and does not seek to sunder his reality from that-which-is; instead he creates out of the elements given to him, to forge something new, yes, but under the recognizable mode of referent-with-sign, in imitation of God, not in opposition.

This is not to suggest that all modern art is nihilism and somehow anti-God; but rather, the temptation to completely divorce reality, the (visible in some way that is recognizable to the instructed viewer) conjunction of sign to referent- that is the drift into nihilism, into usurption of God, as art's meaning breaks down.

II.

A second item, not really related to the above: while at the library this afternoon I browsed through the New York Times Magazine (went looking for the Oxford American which was missing for some reason today) wherein I read an article on the big project current among the Google people and others to digitize all of the world's books.

Not sure what to think of this project, and its implications for books, text, and authors. The article took the tone of 'it is inveitable and we may as well accept it with the problems and advantages'- though I'm not entirely certain anything is inveitable, per se. Things, remarkably enough, can change and not fall within our predictions. Nonetheless, it is more than likely that eventually all books will make their way onto the internet. Is this an entirely good thing? Perhaps it will encourage literacy, but I'm not sure of that. I do know that while I use the internet as much as anyone, including for 'serious' research, I still prefer a flesh-and-binding book in my hands to an article- or online book- on the computer.

But besides that there are more profound issues at hand: how will authors continue to make money? If they don't, what will the result be for writing quality? How does digitalization affect our experience of the text, and what does it change for the relation of author, text, and reception? And so on. I don't really know, but I do know (cliche ahead!) that the internet is definitely changing, profoundly, our experience with text and information, and through that, our culture and very mentality and world-picture. Interesting times...

Know Thyself

2006-06-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

'Know thyself': this is true humility, the humility that teaches us to be inwardly humble and makes our heart contrite. Such humility you must cultivate and guard. For if you do not yet know yourself you cannot know what humility is, and have not yet embarked truly on the task of cultivating and guarding. To know oneself is the goal of the practice of the virtues.

Nikitas Stithatos, On The Inner Nature of Things

The Interpenetrating Power of the Holy Ghost

2006-06-12T08:27:00.000-05:00

{This is an initial draft more or less so there are plenty of places I will make revisions and maybe even substantially rewrite.}

The Interpenetrating Power of the Holy Ghost

Those who aim at ascending with the body to Heaven indeed need violence and constant suffering, especially in the early stages of their renunciation, until our pleasure-loving dispositions and unfeeling hearts attain to love of God and chastity by manifest sorrow.

St. John of the Ladder

The window was cracked open wide enough for the thick wafting presence of the paper mill on Douglas Street five blocks over to mingle with the musty dampness of the room and the sweat and odor of two bodies oozing through the week’s worth of used clothing piled up in a corner. July heavy night weighed on everything in the Dubois Street Apartment room; the inescapable push and smother. Disembodied mechanical voices, crickets rose and fell with the passing minutes in defiance of the heavy air; in the distance through the paper mill scented evening fog the graveyard shift switcher in the yard announced its weariness with the world long and unmechanical lonely. The girl laughed raucously and pulled on Bobby’s bare arm towards the unmade bed catching the also weary yellowed moon light through the opened window.

There was a thudding on the door and a muffled voice seeped through. Bobby’s roommate had forgotten his keys, or dropped them on the way home, or on the way to the bar- he might remember in the morning; he usually did or someone would find them and then find him. He was lucky like that.

“Damn it, open the door. I hear you two in there- you can’t fool me no way. You get that whore out of here and- and let me in. I’ll break this thing down smash both of you up and you know I’ll do it you know it man. Damn you both. You open up now; get her- get out.” Bobby groaned and stood up to open the door. The girl giggled under her raspy breath, certain that this was only a minor and amusing interruption because why would the roommate mind all that much sure he was drunk but why should that matter? Only ten minutes had passed since she got there, the evening having been spent up till then at a movie and then a bar; nothing had happened worth mentioning so it couldn’t be over yet. The door opened. A nervous old lamp was flicked on illuminating a desk surrounded by papers and yellowed notebooks and old free newspapers full of unanswered want ads and a half eaten hamburger in one corner. The now frowning girl was pulling a faded Ole Miss print shirt over her artificial tanned thin lined shoulders. Bobby had sat back down on the bed staring at the flickering light. He didn’t turn to look at the drunken roommate, who now spoke again, his words crawling out and mingling with the sweat and heat of the room.

“This is my place, my place and I’m going to- sleep. I want to- to sleep. Now. Not with her in here. Clear- clear- out. You hear man?”

“Look Lee Ann I’m sorry,” Bobby muttered to the now fully dressed girl standing looking bored by the bed. “You’d best leave before happy here gets all in a wad. He gets like this- I should have, we should have gone somewhere else. He ain’t no account when he gets like this, and he ain’t gonna leave and I can’t make him right now. You’d best go for now. It’s late anyhow. I’ll see you tomorrow maybe,” but he already sounded tired and noncommittal.

She grunted angrily and stomped out her auburn hair flaring angrily except where it was matted to her forehead in beads of perspiration that also glared. Her words were short.

“You ain’t no fun Bobby damn you. I knew you didn’t have it. Leave me alone if you ain’t got it- I ain’t wasting my time no more with you.” The roommate didn’t seem to notice her any more, and instead stared stupidly into space for a few seconds, stumbled further into the room, shut the door, and sat on the floor against the bed and grunted with satisfaction.

All his momentum, physical and otherwise, lost, Bobby sat down on his bed and brooded for several minutes before flipping off the lamp and lying back on his sullen bed wet with the dampness of the July night, his blood slowly coursing as the internal heat receded painfully and he found himself tired and not knowing. We didn’t do nothing and it’s all his fault but maybe it’s also some of mine and really I don’t know if only we’d started earlier. He felt a strange sort of relief and guilt mingled with the anger that her delicate raspy form was a long ways off from his. The switcher gave a final moan through the paper mill fog and shuffled off for the night to sleep away its world-weariness for a while. The crickets continued their defiant mechanical rise and fall and the yellow world-weary moon flooded everything.

Bobby had never found much sense in the mystical rites that took place behind the plywood doors, but he persisted in coming, every Sunday evening, every week of the year. He even came in one time with a bad hangover; he sat in the very back and swayed discordantly with the music and the clapping and the manifestations of the Holy Ghost that lilted through the sanctuary filling everything; he even sang along loudly and gratingly to the songs (which he had memorized by heart though he had never so much as said the words before). Usually though he stayed in the same position, and never moved to the music or anything else, never responding to anything. Certainly not the maniacs who would occasionally fall out in the aisle or in front of the wooden altar below the pulpit. He thought, or so he liked to think he thought, that it was all a clever crock to make old people happy, and make the younger ones feel better about themselves after a week of not so religious sentiments. Probably the old people too- he knew some of them and not all of them were so devout beyond the plywood door sacred precinct.

As he sat in one of the very rear pews clutching the one in front of him, his fingers tightening and relaxing rhythmically the only part of him on the outside moving, all through the service, he reminded himself that it was all a crock. He didn’t sing, didn’t stand, didn’t close his eyes when the preacher gave his long rambling prayers. He kept coming. Some nights he absolutely hated it, hated the church, hated the pale green carpet that led down to the hateful altar and the even more hateful preacher and song man, and all the idiots who followed all the garbled nonsense that flowed out from that pulpit, from the idiots who occupied it. But he kept coming, even though he was never sure why he did. He would tell himself it was for the show and that was the only reason he came but he never felt entertained. So he kept coming, and every Sunday he would recite that excuse to himself, an excuse that he did not even believe and which he knew he did not believe but that he kept telling himself.

He always believed in God, believed in Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, but wasn’t sure about the rest of it, and positively despised most of it, usually including the parts he believed. He did not actually like the idea of Jesus; yet no matter how hard he tried to dislike and disbelieve he couldn’t, not for long. That night, that night she and he came so close and not metaphorically, it was pounding in his head, and he couldn’t get it out no matter how hard he tried. Two days before. He hadn’t heard from her since, she didn’t answer when he called, didn’t come to the door of her trailer she shared with her step-mother and two younger sisters (half or otherwise Bobby had never asked). The paper mill smell- it came in through the two big plywood sheath doors of Gospel Truth Tabernacle that were left cracked open and through the open windows- reminded him. She smelled like that in his memory, and she would smell like that forever.

A large woman sitting in front of him, perhaps forty and dressed in a floral print dress that smelled of mothballs, suddenly lurched up and began half screaming half singing something in a strange manic voice, speaking in an unknown tongue. Bobby shuddered but stared up at the back of her head as it bobbed up and down with the pulse of the message, and he kept tightening and relaxing his fingers on the pew. He hated the tongues most off all, yet he found a strange thrill of terror, disgust, mystery, all whirled together, when it happened, like it was something terribly significant though he did not know what it signified, or at least he was not certain. He was rarely certain of anything and thought it better to be that way. The preacher stopped preaching and instead called upon the congregation to listen, and for an interpreter to come forward.

A scrawny man in greasy overalls, his thinning hair scruffily gesturing frantically in several directions meekly stood and walked over into the aisle next to the woman, who briefly paused. “Preacher I done received a Sign. It’s a Sign, preacher, a genuine Sign, goes right along with Miss Sally’s receiving of her own Sign. If you don’t mind preacher,” and he paused as if to catch his breath and lay still more emphasis upon his revelation, “I have this Sign from the Holy Ghost, sure as I’m standing here.” Bobby’s fingers stretched out all the way from the pew into the space beyond then folded back and clutched the pew harder, let go, clutched again.

The woman had resumed, her head lifted up her face sweating aglow in holy rapture. She gave a final cry, breaching for the uttermost guttural, and sat back down. The scrawny man in overalls tilted back his head and closed his eyes and began to speak in a thin monotone that yet trembled with an interior energy like hummingbird wings pounding, even his frantic hair reaching out into the realm of holy signification. “The Blood of the Lamb is the breaking of the whole world and everything will burn up in the Fire at the End and what’s not worth keeping will burn up. What’s to keep has got to be cut off from the rest or it will burn up in the Fire. This is a true Sign of God, and it’s all Gospel Truth, and it’s all in the Holy Bible. The Power of the Blood of the Lamb will burn the cinders twice over and cut off the unclean from the assembly of the washed. This is a Sign of God, and you who’s got ears to hear, hear this Sign. Cut off whatever’s holding on. You know right who you are, who’s picked out to hear this sign, this very night! Today is the day of salvation! Him with eyes to see let him see.”

Bobby was trembling all over suddenly, which frightened him more with its suddenness and un-summoned nature than the message the man was delivering.
I didn’t do nothing, I ain’t got nothing on my hands, and I won’t be burnt up because I don’t go along with a bunch of half-witted fools. I am not afraid of the Fire! I don’t need nothing cut off from me. I am whole. I am whole damn it all. And anyway we didn’t do nothing because we were interrupted.

The man suddenly turned around and faced Bobby- looked at him full in the eyes for a brief moment- then lifted his face, glistening with fervor, up at the moldy ceiling blazing with sacred energy and catching the burning tongues. The congregation murmured- surely the message was concluded but it wasn’t and this was the climax for the messenger’s eyes and ears and lips were blazing brighter than before. “The filthy, the fornicators, all the unclean- they ain’t whole! They’re going to be cut off unless they burn now, get cut off now! The fire is burning, burning, burning! The Sword of the Lord flashes down and it’s burning hotter than the sun and even all the fires of Hell. Everybody going to be cut off who don’t cut themselves off from uncleanness now; you got ears to hear, hear. Amen.”

Bobby was sweating strongly now. The man sat down, not even looking at Bobby. It didn’t matter. The preacher stood back up and began preaching about the wonders of the Signs from the Lord and reiterated the point about listening and following, and soon the song man had a hymn struck up, and there were loud halleluiahs and shouts and groans from people being slain in the Holy Ghost out in the pale green carpeted aisles that led up into the mystery of mysteries. Bobby couldn’t take it any longer. It wasn’t just the Sign that was spoken right into him; it was everything everywhere coming into him and he couldn’t stop its coming so long as he was in this place. He thought at once that was all a crock and that it was all true, so true he could feel it pulsing in him filling his being, and it filling hurt and was uncertain in its full strength and significance and he still hated it. He slid out of the pew and crept back to the plywood sheath doors and slipped into the paper mill night smelling of her and guilt and the Fire and the interpenetrating power of the Holy Ghost.

She came back. He knew she would- she was young and he was young, had some money and was fairly good looking anyway or so he thought. And he had it in him, whatever she had said. He had kicked his roommate out finally- sure, both of them had a little too much to drink now and then but the roommate was too regular for Bobby’s taste. She came back to his door and pulled on his arm again and he let her back in to stay. She was happy, and even though she smelled of the paper mill night and now of the Fire and the Holy Ghost they were together for two months and Bobby thought that he too was happy except for the few times the smell of the Holy Ghost and the Fire was too strong, but those times were rare. Then she left one morning and didn’t come back. Bobby got back to the little apartment on the other side of the Kansas City Southern yard one evening after the IGA supermarket on East Main had closed. She wasn’t there anymore and had taken all her things and left a note saying she was going to Mobile, and wouldn’t be coming back and please don’t follow me and probably we’ll never see each other again. Ever.

He was angry and sad for an hour or so, and walked over to the railroad yard across the street, its edges swathed in the verdant kudzu green of summer that threatened to consume the yard, rails and cars and perhaps the entire world in all its pieces. There was nothing moving on the line tonight, so the killdeers rejoiced in their free reign over the gravel and weeds and the liminal space beside the kudzu. He thought for a long time listening to the killdeers furtive cries, squatting in the liminal escalating precinct between vine and ballast mound. Then he reached a decision.

El Paso lay a long ways across the stretched out interstate, further than going to Jackson or Meridian or visiting his kin-folks outside of Pelahatchie. He had been to El Paso once before and had an uncle there who had offered him a job back in February. He had called him up after making his decision to go- to go anywhere he had decided- and asked if it was still available. Yes his uncle said and you’re welcome to it so long as you don’t screw up real bad. It probably wasn’t a very good job- Bobby wasn’t even sure of the particulars other than it involved his uncle’s shipping operation about which he didn’t really know anything and hoped it was more or less legal- but it was somewhere else far away and that was what mattered. Everything here was in confused fragments that had ceased to work together though he was unsure why and how.

He got started late, so he spent the night outside of Shreveport because he was tired of driving (though certain of his decision to go-to go anywhere). The motel was as cheap as they get before the health inspector finds the bribes insufficient to keep it open. Bobby threw his things in the cigarette-smelling room then drove down the strip towards a liquor store he had passed on the way in. He was tired and dry and anyway he had a lot on his mind. It was Sunday, but he had finally broken his habit, a week after she had come back. She didn’t like it, so he stopped. But now he felt a strange urge to go to church, anywhere, it didn’t matter. The Gospel Truth Tabernacle was a long ways off.

There was a Catholic church a couple of blocks from the liquor store. St. Lawrence’s Roman Catholic Church Sunday Mass at Eleven Perpetual Adoration Sunday thru. Monday the sign read. Bobby was intrigued. He had heard once that Catholics ate Jesus, which had fascinated him when he heard about it, though he doubted whether such a thing was possible, and whether if it was if he would want to. He did not know what Perpetual Adoration was but he imagined it had something to do with eating Jesus because both concepts were Catholic and intrinsically mysterious. He stopped. There were two cars in the parking lot under several looming loblollies and a scraggly redbud bending under the existential weight of the taller trees.

He cautiously, reticently parked his battered Ford pickup and swung out onto the still hot pavement. His legs trembled. The door was only a short distance away but his legs nearly refused to carry him and he did not know why really except that it was the reticence of broaching an untouched before mystery. There was a light coming from under the door, but all was silent. He hoped the door would be locked and he could go to the liquor store but he knew the door would be open. It was. Into the pulsing receptacle of mystery he walked, past the holy water fount and down a thinning blue carpet (not green but still leading into a holy of holies caught in mystery), down towards the side chapel where three elderly parishioners were kneeling in front of a small monstrance upon the altar. All was silent except for one stooped over lady in a green dress (barely smelling of mothballs) fingering her rosary and whispering her prayers. The other two parishioners- one her husband and the other another elderly lady- were praying silently before the enshrined Sacrament. All was quiet and dim with two low burning bulbs and several votive candles flickering. Bobby walked down to the rail in front of the altar and stood there, sweating and trembling interiorly.

“Is it true what they say about you people? Dear God is it true?” He had turned half way around, so that the Sacrament was in one corner of his vision and the parishioners in the other. “Is it true? Do you believe it?”

The lady with the rosary looked up, having only registered the intruder’s presence when he spoke. “They say a lot of things. You got something in particular in mind son?”

“Is it true that you eat Jesus here? And if you do where- where do you find Him and when and do you keep Him around?”

“You drunk son?”

“No ma’am I’m as sober as the day I was born maybe more. I’m as serious as- as serious as I ever been, maybe more.”

She turned and whispered something to her husband, who had by now looked up and was watching the interchange. “Well son I suppose it’s true though I can’t say that I’ve ever tried to put it that way. We receive the Blessed Sacrament at Mass and it’s the Body and Blood of Jesus you know. Yes, we eat Him, so to speak, though I reckon I don’t usually talk about that way you know.”

“But where does He come from? Where does He go? Dear Lord.”

“I don’t guess I really know. Father O’Brian likes to say it’s all a mystery and what not, which works for me. I guess- well I guess you might say He comes into you, and stays there. But you really should talk to Father O’Brian. He’s good at- at speaking about such things, you know. Afraid I’m not. Jim here ain’t no better, and he don’t like talking much anyway, except about the weather and those durn engines of his.”

“What’s that up there- you got Jesus in here?” He pointed to the brightly gilded monstrance, its circle of rays an orb from which emanated the pulsing energy that shook Bobby’s heart and screamed some sort of sign but he could not find its referent yet.

“This is the place for Perpetual Adoration. The Sacrament is kept in there…”

“In there. Jesus.”

“You normal talk like this in church son?” the husband threw in, slightly irritated.

But Bobby didn’t hear anyone anymore. He sat down on the floor in front of the rail and stared transfixed at the Sacrament and his insides were trembling even more while his face went blanker. One small piece, one fragment but within it was the whole thing just like the Holy Ghost shaking that other tabernacle filled everything and brought everything together: he knew it and all rushed in on him just like it had before but he did not know how to control it or its full signification. But this time he did not leave. He couldn’t. He cursed himself inwardly for even associating with such foolishness but he immediately retracted his curse and went silent, still trembling. Fear and loathing mingled through his mind but didn’t cancel each other out. They only mingled in some uncomfortable union.

The others had stopped praying and were fidgeting in their pews, wondering what the seemingly half-crazed man sitting on the floor before the Sacrament was going to do. After several minutes it became clear he wasn’t going to do anything. He sat there, his neck bent back to stare up at the shimmering monstrance. The parishioners went back to their prayers, though with an occasional eye on the strange man filled with fear and loathing and thirst. He however was silent.

He didn’t remember how many minutes or hours he sat on the floor before the shimmering receptacle of the Sacrament. He eventually turned around and the parishioners were no longer there, though he didn’t remember seeing them leave. Pulling out his watch he looked at the time: nine o’clock, the liquor store would still be open. He walked back to his truck and drove down the few blocks to the store passing under traffic lights shimmering long through their lenses like gaudy monstrances dangling over the highway in some sort of strange shrine, until they finally turned and the nervous uncertain flow of time on the blacktop was released again and he finally arrived and quenched his thirst. Only he was still thirsty and he knew why even though he didn’t think he knew anything anymore but only some things he could not properly say. Only a gathering of words and the attendant pieces of things that seemed to be their meanings- there was Jesus for certain and there was a whole host of images and words clustered around His image filled with the ever-gathering power of the Holy Ghost.

The hotel room was smoky tasting and smelling and the sheets smelled like cigarettes and cheap sex and mold and the losing of what someone never had to begin with. Walls off-white, the carpet green tinted, and the bathroom cramped and dingy, all recalling internal migrant wanderers looking for the place between unmitigated unending possession and their unmitigated loss where they would remain, if they could ever arrive at such a point. Bobby started to turn on the television- Free Cable HBO TV Guide Provided- but stopped. He saw the monstrance and the Blessed Sacrament flickering in his eyes reflected upon the TV screen on the tilted rotating stand, the room filled with loss and detachment and then that same interpenetrating ceaseless power of the Holy Ghost. And maybe it was through the shimmering gloaming of the world and all things sacrament-receptacle that the Holy Ghost flowed out and filled the room and his eyes and the world. Drawing his eyes down from the television screen, screening out briefly the flickering remembrance of the Jesus that was eaten and all things were there and were known but unknown in mystery, he opened the door next to the bed and looked inside.

A blue-covered Gideon Bible and a TV Guide lay within. He picked up the Bible and opened it to Nehemiah and began reading. The Bible was surely permeated with the interpenetrating power for it was all over and within the places of mystery and their internal imagery. He read for hours in a strange journey full of further mystery and signs he could not even begin to place in any sort of grid except for one in which all the things were precisely those unknown signs and mysteries. He eventually decided that the difficult words and mystical names of the Old Testament section were something too mystical for his brain at the hour, so he moved onto the New Testament, starting at The Gospel According to St. Matthew. But after a few verses he fell asleep breathing the cigarette residue and the cheap liquor on his own breath under the power of the Holy Ghost issuing from the Fragment holding the whole wrapped in arcane blue-bound mysteries of unknown signifieds.

When he awoke, he was fully clothed lying on the hotel bed clutching the Gideon Bible in his left hand. For a moment he lay there under the mildewed ceiling and everything was blurry again. But then he recalled the night before and the sudden culmination of being that had surmounted him and driven him to the Jesus-who-could-be-eaten and then to the receptacle of mystery bound in blue and stamped with a golden lamp. He felt as if he should do something now, but he did not know what. So he got up, checked the time (it was ten o’clock in the morning) and prepared to trudge out to pay his bill and get back on the road. Rising from the bed he found the Gideon Bible in his left hand still. Almost he set it down but removed his hand from the drawer the Bible still in it. Out of some suddenly developed sense of connection to this particular Bible he decided to take it with him.

He considered briefly that stealing- or borrowing if it helped to salve the conscience- a Gideon Bible from a hotel room might be morally problematic. It was a Bible after all and while Bobby had never been a very moral person as far as all that went, Bibles were certainly endowed with the awful mystery that emanated from Jesus and the places His mystery and power centered in. Also it was rather like being around ministers: one felt a certain aura of, perhaps not holiness, but at least morality and obligation around them. It wasn’t appropriate to use certain words or phrases around a minister. For also in ministers was some sense or trace of the mystery though Bobby as a rule did not like ministers. But then he did not like the mystery or the power or any of it at all, all the more as it entangled him.

It ended- the brief internal debate that was still conducted within the dual currents of fear and loathing in the face of the mystery- with Bobby carrying the Gideon Bible out into his car where he placed it on the dash, though he left the moral question temporarily unresolved- call it borrowing he decided and he would work that out later maybe. The bill was paid and he bought a Coke to tamp down on his ongoing thirst. And then he returned to the road.

But on the road his mind began to work and turn over all of the pieces of things that had developed and all the images and words that had accrued to those pieces. And he began to imagine a single flow, of a single unwrapping event of events within other events, all bound together by that undulating ceaseless motion of the Holy Ghost he had first tasted and smelled in the Gospel Truth Tabernacle. The Sign from the Lord stood out and its significance mysterious and fiery spread up through the flow. But against this story arose the rest of his narrative and all the arising images that would not fit. The single stream from the Tabernacle onward came into contradiction with the rest and he grew angry at the stream of the Holy Ghost and told himself that it wasn’t anything at all, that he knew nothing anyway and that was all there was. The crazy people at the Tabernacle and the crazy people muttering their prayers and staring at that golden orb, eating Jesus- it was all craziness and the power wasn’t but was craziness seeping out of the paper-mill night and filling people’s heads like bad air from the swamp.

East Texas rolled by and thunderheads rolled down from the shimmering Great Plains filling the sky and quickening the pace of motorists on I-20. Bobby was on of those motorists pounding through East Texas apprehensive in the back of the throat at the thunderheads and the distant sheen of rain sheets. He had stopped thinking for a while. Outside of Shreveport, near the state line, lunch and a dark gritty strong coffee cup to offset the lingering cheap liquor and unsettled sleep had met him. The caffeine coursed through and sloshed off the liquor and sleep but the ever unfolding road lulled his mind back to the empty isolation of the interstate. But now the rain was coming and in the approach of the rain thought returned, for his senses were re-engaged in earnest and the inward sensation, vague and controlled, of danger entered as the first rain curtain fell on the blacktop stage. Slightly tensed and alert Bobby sat up and began to drive and think in greater earnestness.

The crazy people in the Tabernacle were off their rockers hollering and being slain in the Holy Ghost Who isn’t really there but is really the bad air swamp gas filtering up in the paper mill through the night air cry of the girl who pulled on his arm and led him into iniquity no the bed of pleasure and that is where life is not in the smothering power that isn’t but is filling up everything. Except the smothering power can’t be escaped and anyway do I really even want to escape it? The rain is coming down hard.

And now the rain is pounding and my head is pounding to keep up but it’s only that coffee that was too strong but kept me awake is keeping me awake and those people in the other place they were crazy too lit up on the swamp gas night air paper mill old people nothing better don’t know anything not even eating Jesus which they think they do but they can’t.

And now the hail is shattering the thick air and the lightning cuts a course and splits the world and the air and everything even the rain that keeps falling in the power of the Holy Ghost that’s penetrating even it and is maybe making the courses for the lightning and maybe for everything else.

But everything that doesn’t open up to that power and the Blood of the Lamb that burns like fire and is in the golden orb and everywhere everything will be cut off and cast into fire but I am whole even my arms and legs and she is gone but she was here for a while and I enjoyed her but now she’s gone and the swamp gas night air is still here and it is the power of the Holy Ghost and the fire the fire burning up what’s to be cut off and cast into the fire it burns and the rain is still coming but the lightning is past.

The rain kept up for several more minutes though now it was passing and his thoughts began to slow as the accelerator pumped. An exit appeared a few miles ahead under the misting after-shower and Bobby almost instinctively pulled off onto it though the blue interstate signs Food Gas Lodging were blank as blue as pool water. He pulled off to the right of the exit ramp, up a rough blacktop that quickly faded into dirt. Bobby found himself stopping, no place in particular but the place now made by his stopping and the thing that would shortly happen, where all the event and the contradiction would converge and the contradiction collapse into the flare of far-off nearby fire and certainty with the full realignment of being and direction cutting into everything. The dirt road here was edged by kudzu verdant screaming fecundity and it climbed up to and mingled with heaven, marking the liminal space and bounding off its symbols. He knelt beside the clambering vines into the red blood dirt and all unfolded:

He opened the Gideon Bible that had lain beside him since Shreveport. The Gospel According to St. Matthew again appeared and he traced down as close as he could to the place he had left off the night before and began to read. But he only read through one verse and it stopped him and became a place like the road had ended for him and become a place of convergence and resolution:

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

That was it. It was like the insane Sign of the Lord that the man in the overalls in the Gospel Truth Tabernacle had spoken into him; that was the source, the inception in the hot paper mill smelling night where the Holy Ghost had gripped him and a distant image of the Jesus he didn’t believe he knew or want to know had invaded him. And now the process of event had led up to this point, to a point of action. It was in the Sign he thought- something must be cut off and the Fire avoided, or perhaps felt and in the feeling and the cutting off now the Fire would not consume. The bed of fornication and of pleasure was the point of convergence for the other event and he thought of it now with fear and loathing and still with pleasure though she was gone and smelled only of paper mill night now mixed in with everything else. And that was a contradiction ready to collapse, if something was not cut off and things resolved.

He read the passage again. It would not leave him alone now. Cut if off and cast if from thee. Cut it off. That was it, the convergence point where the mystery and the contradiction could now meet and something be resolved. The same fear and loathing was still swimming around inside but they were slowly being resolved and his certainty was gathering. But it would wane. And still he did not think he knew. And that is what brought him to do what he now knew he must do, and he proceeded barely thinking, as the realization of the act seized him and would not let him go. The power of the Holy Ghost still followed him and that event remained but this was something beside it, something that he would grip and lead into the two events and resolve the contradiction. He got back in his car and drove back onto the interstate and all the way to El Paso, as East Texas passed into Central and then West and everything else had receded into the empty isolation of the moving car. Only now it was joined to the determination of the act that would resolve the contradiction and clear up certainty. From time to time crossing the vast innerscape of Texas he would turn his eyes to his right arm and begin to develop a calm fixed determination and think Soon it will be cut off and I will be certain anyway everything must be cut off if some is not here and now. The innerscape rolled by and his determination mounted until it was a shimmering internal force that was mingled with his growing sense and now acceptance (still stalked by loathing and unholy fear) of the power of the Holy Ghost, which yet he was still uncertain of. But soon all would be resolved and the Sign of the Lord, the heavy-weighted all-things embracing Fragment of the Jesus Who dogged him everywhere would be made clear, or at least, clearer. He did not know what would follow after the act was completed and the contradiction resolved; perhaps there were other contradictions, and he suspected the mystery was deeper than he now imagined it.

The room was brightly lit the windows closed to the hovering heavy dry night outside. Bobby sat down in a folding chair- it would help to be slightly comfortable he had decided though not detracting from the virtue (in all the senses of the word) of the act and its completion- and opened his long bladed pocketknife. A pawnshop purchase (taken from the place of cast-offs where former items pawned in perhaps debauchery despair dying were reinvented remade) he had found it and a whetstone, which he had used the day before to sharpen the knife until it would cut the skin with barely a touch. All was ready. An open bottle of vodka stood on the table, but it was only for after, after the arm was gone and lying on the floor and the stub was properly bandaged and the bleeding under control. Then he would take a few sips to control the pain, until he could pass out onto the bed and sleep off the pain that was sure to come, and awaken in the cheap rented room on the edge of El Paso and he would go to his uncle and say nothing and answer nothing to the questions to come.

All was planned out. He had some gauze and bandages ready, and some antiseptic which he doused upon the blade. He stared intently at his arm for several moments, as if to imprint an image of it before the climatic act, then focused, and determined where exactly to start cutting. He took the blade and marked a spot above his elbow. The blood oozed out and he winced slightly. Then he wrapped a tourniquet around above the mark, and pulled it tight. The circulation began to slow, then cease, in the soon to be detached limb.

He started cutting it hurt he muffled a scream and his fingers gripped the handle of the knife so hard he thought he might burst the pieces apart- he pushed in hard through the skin down into the muscle and the veins. Blood squirted out into his shirt and into his face. He didn’t pause now; he cut and cut down, down, the pain shooting through his arm and all through his body. But he didn’t stop; there was the bone. It was tough, but the blade was still sharp. He circled around the bone, just cutting into it. He paused, his head throbbing and spinning in pain. He almost went for the vodka. He wished he had some morphine or something but no there was no going back and he would carry through the full thrust of pain. Back to it, he sawed the blade back and forth through the blood and bone creaking and sloshing and the room receded in the midst of the violence unleashed the contradictions coming apart. Halfway through, going, he thrust the tip of the knife down through the center of the bone into the marrow and it was through. Sawing, sawing, cut, almost through- he pushed through, the bone was cut and his now almost lifeless arm hung by a thin sliver of skin and muscle. With a final exertion he clipped the strand (the pinnacle of the act the crossing into the sacred precinct the kudzu crowded in urging on the act, movement, under the ceiling flooding with unknown tongues) and the arm fell to the ground in an evanescent pool of his blood. He began to scream, looking down then began to pant and shake all over and her grip on his lifeless arm came to life and passed away as quickly in the paper-mill smelling night that wasn’t around him anymore but was dry and sterile yet the power of the Holy Ghost hovered nearby over the brooding world and he saw a circlet of light upon the stucco wall.

But he didn’t lose his head, no, not yet. He took the bandage and gauze and began to treat the gaping wound as best he knew how. It didn’t take as long as he had expected, and soon the blood was stopping, though the bandaging was soaked through and he was feeling weak. He wondered faintly if he was going to die, and then what they would put in the obituary and who would read and what people would think. Suicide? Mania? Maybe both. No one would really know: his motives and his sudden knowledge would pass with him from the world. Yet now he knew and it was in this profound and inscrutable act of knowing that he found a surge of certainty that boiled up as an inscrutable comfort that cut and stung but held as he stretched out on the neatly made bed and fell into unconsciousness, his consciousness having reached the longed for edge and passed through the act into knowing.

And the pulsing power of the Holy Spirit through plywood doors paper mill night roiling filling flowing from the Fragment to make all things whole: the hazy image of Jesus Who could be eaten and Who was in the midst of the flowing mighty inscrutable stream: converging as he saw and in the seeing was knowing but he knew also that much needed cutting and it was not his arm, not really. But then he knew that it was not his arm the instrument the appendage reaching out into the paper mill night yet never truly grasping only being grasped (for his fingers could not feel to grip and his eyes were always closed) that he had cut off, that he had been summoned to sever chop cut, but it was something else and yet violence must perhaps be recurring and perhaps even stronger.

He did know what yet but he promised himself as he passed from awareness that in the morning- for morning was near and the sky would soon turn purple and fire and gold as God woke everything into shimmering sudden metaphor of resurrection and wholeness- he would find what it was he had cut off. For he felt that wholeness was not far away, though he was not whole (he had screamed that to himself inside while passing through the outer innerscape of Texas) but that somehow, as things were cut away and the image of Jesus hazy and burning came closer and filled his eyes he would be whole and the Fire would come but it would now be the cleansing Fire of the Holy Ghost speaking and he would listen, and he would know. But for now he slept and the bleeding had stopped though his blood was moving now.

Random Theological Reflections

2006-06-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

1. Life is movement-in-love (if it can be defined beyond the parameters of the act and unfolding succession of moments that it is, as existence-in-movement), movement around, in, and towards the Holy Trinity through the remaking centering axis of the Cross of God Incarnate.

2. The movement of the Holy Trinity, in so far as we can speak of movement in God, is precisely that movement of love between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. It is the movement of self-giving love from one Person to the Other, which is eternal and is the origin of all movement and indeed existence in the created world. For it is out of the overflow, as it were, of God’s love in Himself that He creates and loves His creation.

3. Christ becomes man in order to bring man into motion towards and in God; Christ returns humanity to its proper orbit around God. This is the arc of forgiveness, reconciliation, and remaking-in-love, the transition of man from his self-centered fragmentation to orbit-in-love about God. Man once again gives glory to God, the fulfillment of the mission of Christ Incarnate, in being fully human and living with his orientation towards God.

4. Christ is the only reference point around which the world can at all derive meaning. This is only reinforced in the postmodern world as we see how evanescent our constructions and meanings whether in text or interpersonal definition in fact are.

5. The Cross, as the place where all things undergo an ultimate deconstruction and breaking (for it is the throne of the King Who Himself is broken and dies); out of this ultimate deconstruction that is itself contextualized within God Who is life comes the remaking of the world, of the reuniting of a cosmos of disparate dying fragments.

6. Outside of orbit about the Holy Trinity revealed in the Incarnation personhood is continually shifting as our points of reference change from one temporal contingent object or text or idea to another.

7. II Corinthians 5:20: man becomes partner in reconciliation in the redemption of the world; the mission of Christ is transmuted into human life through the Holy Spirit Who penetrates the broken places of the world. For it is in the weakness of the vessel that reconciliation is achieved; nonviolence proves stronger than the violence rendered against these vessels, for it is the interpenetrating power of God that operates in the weak and broken.

8. Words revive in meaning under the great narrative that God weaves into the world, from its inception in the story-making of creation, to the incarnated narrative of Christ and the on-going unfolding story of the Church. Within this overarching narrative are many other stories that unfold and exist within it, having the great divine narrative as their anchor point. The divine narrative is reflected and indeed ensconced within human stories, in varying degrees. Human apprehension of God and the divine story lies in so many places, in every culture, as reflections and yearnings of the single divine story. This is why so many mythologies and stories and folk-tales sound similar and why they so often approach Christian elements without being so. The secular scholar often explains these things in such a way as to dilute Christianity; Christians in turn often seek to negate similarities with Christianity and other faiths or mythologies, thinking that they do in fact dilute the faith. Or it may be that people imagine that then all systems collapse into one, rather than leading up to the revelation of the fullness of truth. This in turn is often seen as ‘intolerance’ in the modern world but is in fact an acknowledgement of the truth inhering in humanity’s struggle and story-telling. But it does not negate the ultimate value and totality of truth within the revelation of Christ.

Verticality and Other Internal Constants

2006-05-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

The Andes are a compendium of life in the vertical with the occasional interspersion of horizontal or almost horizontal space; but it is at the mercy of the vertical slopes that climb into the sky and down to the rivers hemmed in by everlasting mountains. The sun is at the mercy of the vertical land, its hours modified by the bulk of stone and earth that here challenges the heavens. The land stands in both challenge and symbiosis with its human inhabitants; the Andean people have over the centuries of life up against the vertical landscape forged a way of living within it. The little villages rise as on scaffolds along the ridges; narrow aqueducts (a particularly greenery embraced one is pictured below) and dizzy trails thread the mountains and mock the distance and height, that is, for the Andean peasants. A gringo from sea level, even one used to walking, finds scurrying around the rocks rather more difficult. Climbing stairs is temporary bursts of anguish and pain and then short euphoria. And the villages are all stairs, stairs and short ramps and then more stairs.

All along the slopes are little fields- maize, potatoes, cabbages, alfalfa (as in the photo above, the field of Geronimo who also owns a little store- with Coca Cola and Inca Kola- tends cows and burros and makes excellent cheese and herbal tea), hay, beans, more potatoes (potatoes are life here and the variety is staggering). They cling to the upturned bones of the earth mountain in the distance looking painted on and inaccessible. Yet people toil on these upanddown places and turn out food.

And then there are the flowers that climb over the slopes and narrow vertical streets of the villages. The mountains are gardens turn on their side and set wild. Color and shape woven into the land like poetry turned loose but rhyme still intact. The whole vertical land is poetry, precipitous and alarming and difficult but incredibly beautiful and rewarding.

Puertas

2006-05-30T14:51:00.000-05:00

Peru was magnificent; beautiful country, beautiful people. Rather than try to describe things in great detail I have opted to construct a handful of photo essays of sorts arranged around certain themes, which I will try to extend beyond the obvious elements one usually associates with Peru- mountains, deserts, rainforests, all that, the grand landscape size things. Which are nice, but I've always felt that the true beauty and wonder of a place lay in the small less noticed things.

This one is of doorways I came across while wandering around the streets of the town of Casmas on the Pacific Coast north of Lima. We stopped at Casmas while traveling north of the Pan-American Highway; it was a wonderful respite from the everlasting barren tear-your-heart-out lonely beautiful emptiness of the desert. Our stop consisted of a clean crisp little restaurant that specialized in seafood- Casmas is a coastal city- where I ate some excellent fried squid on a bed of slightly less fried yucca, which was also delicious. After eating I strolled around, past a little park with its whitewashed trees radiobellowing warhero monuments and a few older men sitting on benches eyeing the gringo. The nearby market was rather low on vendors; a few rather moldy pieces of fruit some turkeys and chickens, and lots of cheap shoes and plasticish odds and ends. But for some reason I mainly noticed the doors while walking the sidewalks crowded by vendors basketsellers sleeping dogs and the occasional triwheeler taxi (mototaxi in Peru, sanlanshi in China, autorickshaw in India).

Doors are heavy with metaphysical, poetical signifiance, besides being imminently useful in regulating the flow of things into a structure. They cross from one precint to another; and in many parts of the world the passage from external to internal in a residence is a very dramatic one, from austerity perhaps to grandeur. Or it may stand that the door itself is the decoration and beauty of a place. There were many doors in Casmas that drew the eye much more strongly than the structure they were ensconsed in. I know nothing further about the significance invested in these portals; where they lead, who has passed through them (and perhaps never passed back through), how many currents have met and mingled through them and how long they will serve as means of passage within the cosmos of Casmas.

Hasta Luego

2006-05-17T11:52:00.000-05:00

I am about to depart for a brief- couple of weeks- trip to Peru, where I will be wandering around the mountains somewhere outside of Lima and then later down to Cuzco and the very nifty ruins of Machu Piccu. Photos and commentary will of course be available here upon my return (assuming I return; there seems to be a nasty tendency for vehicles in the Andes to run off the road which is of course a bad thing when one is driving in the Andes).

Black Creek

2006-05-14T20:59:00.000-05:00

Black Creek is a pretty significant tributary of the Pascagoula River, the principle stream of South Mississippi. A portion of Black Creek flows through one of Mississippi's two wilderness areas, in DeSoto National Forest. Saturday my friend Barry Bigham and I hacked our way into the wilderness area, setting out to follow the Black Creek Trail which traversed- or did traverse- the area. Hurricane Katrina however rearranged the furniture of the woods however, and the trail was discernable only a short distance into the woods. From there out it ceased to exist, beneath the rubble of periodic stretches of completely leveled forest. We persevered for a decent stretch, coming out on a grand gravel bar on the stream, which proved worth the effort.

Innovative stream crossing.

Catalpa trees blooming along the stream.

Catalpa flower floating downstream.

Some pitcher plants that were growing, rather improbably, down in the deep shady woods.

Some Verses

2006-04-27T22:48:00.000-05:00

Postindustrial Dysfunction & the Shrine of Perpetual Adoration

I am washed up on the beach in Biloxi
Undertow that tore away all of the
Deep dysfunction clogged internally
The storm a powerful purgative
Rendering in bold relief postindustrial
Scape and scalpel to sliver off your skin
And run you under all over cold
Eternal oaks in the sand scourged off
Casino barged upon the sewaged strand
Money lost and life wrought naked

You come up stripped away coldly clean
And you find in startling certainty that
Death is a strange plunge to take.
It turns all your insides out in red relief

Now I sit here on this clean concrete slab
Where once Perpetual Adoration once was held
Our Lady of the Gulf’s veneration was kept
I am here and stripped away almost clean
What will be contracted within the coming tomorrow?

Postcolonial Dismemberment

The hallowed vestiges of fragmented motherhood
Blown into the armored cars and army saloon
And flesh and blood and strips of clothing
The bitter afterbirth of violent dissolution
Love and loathing and the sterility of state structure
Death-bound fecundity that wasn’t
Shrapnel and force and toggled un-umbilical cord
Is this the new constant of experience?

I Beseech You That I May Not Cease to Hunger For You

2006-04-19T11:13:00.000-05:00

And you too, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, do you forget us; how long do you turn your face from us? When will you look upon us, and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes, and show us your face? When will you restore yourself to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, reveal yourself to us. Restore yourself to us, that it may be well with us, --yourself, without whom it is so ill with us. Pity our toilings and strivings toward you since we can do nothing without you. You do invite us; do you help us. I beseech you, O Lord, that I may not lose hope in sighs, but may breathe anew in hope. Lord, my heart is made bitter by its desolation; sweeten you it, I beseech you, with your consolation. Lord, in hunger I began to seek you; I beseech you that I may not cease to hunger for you. In hunger I have come to you; let me not go unfed. I have come in poverty to the Rich, in misery to the Compassionate; let me not return empty and despised. And if, before I eat, I sigh, grant, even after sighs, that which I may eat. Lord, I am bowed down and can only look downward; raise me up that I may look upward. My iniquities have gone over my head; they overwhelm me; and, like a heavy load, they weigh me down. Free me from them; unburden me, that the pit of iniquities may not close over me.

Be it mine to look up to your light, even from afar, even from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me, when I seek you, for I cannot seek you, except you teach me, nor find you, except you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking; let me find you in love, and love you in finding. Lord, I acknowledge and I thank you that you has created me in this your image, in order that I may be mindful of you, may conceive of you, and love you; but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrong-doing, that it cannot achieve that for which it was made, except you renew it, and create it anew. I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate your sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, --that unless I believed, I should not understand.

St. Anselm, Proslogium

St. Louis Churches and Such

2006-04-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

Traveled up to St. Louis with one of my professors for the express purpose of looking at old churches (old being relative of course- stuff from the late 1800's, early 1900's, but mostly modeled on Gothic and Romanesque churches in Europe). He is also conducting a religious architecture course, of which I am a student; this trip went along with the course, and counted for three hours credit. Which means I aquired credit hours simply for wandering about in old churches and museums. Not bad. The following are a few pictures I took of some of the spots we visited.

The interior of St. Louis Cathedral, which has the largest single concentration of mosaics in the world. Magnificent church.

A view of the cathedral from the back, looking up at the wonderful Byzantine-looking dome.

This is a neo-classical styled Methodist Church, which stands in a section of St. Louis known as Holy Corner due to an unusual concentration of religious entities within a few blocks.

The Old Cathedral down near the Arch.

The interior of St. Ambrose of Milan. Very nice Romanesque church, in the Italian neighborhood, where there are some pretty decent eateries.

Giving and Forgiving

2006-03-29T22:37:00.000-06:00

In today's climate we think of forgiveness as having to do with our own internal emotional state. Like Dr. Phil, you forgive so that you can deal with the turmoil in your own soul. I have no doubt we need to work through that internal turmoil, but forgiveness doesn't have primarily to do with that; it has primarily to do with my relationship to the person who has wronged me. When I forgive someone, in that act I blame the person. We affirm that a wrong has been committed. It's a social event, it happens between people, it doesn't happen within the mind of one person. The accused must hear and understand that they've done something wrong for the transaction to be complete.

Miroslav Volf, "Giving and Forgiving" (Scroll down a ways)

Concerning History

2006-03-21T20:58:00.000-06:00

"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."

G. K. Chesterton

Meta-Blogging

2006-02-28T18:57:00.000-06:00

1. I have been using the internet since I was in grade school. It was rather primitive and slow back then, but was still captivating. The scope of information that I could access was staggering, even back in those early days before blogging, wikis, and Google News (I was excited by pages that had pictures, even though our computer took ages to load one). I guess I was in my early or mid teens (I make it sound like it was a long time ago!) when I first published my own material online. It's still out there somewhere. Then I moved on to Blogger, three and a half years ago. All of which is to say I've been using and contributing to, in a very small and insignificant way, this thing we call the internet. It's an endlessly useful thing, whether in terms of communication, information-gathering, or just sheer entertainment.

2. Gore Vidal has suggested that the internet is a means for a sort of renewal of literacy, particularly among the younger generations. There is, I think, a great deal of truth in this idea. The internet remains, in many ways, a text-based or at least text-intensive place. Granted, one can now cruise it all day and read very little text at all and instead use various other sorts of media. But a great deal of internet use surely must still involve a good deal of text. It is the experience, at any rate, of the denziens of blog-land (though some apparently see a decline in blogdom approaching), and a good deal other people, myself included. I read a lot of text online, from blogs to news to whole books in the public domain. I still read lots of tradtional text; I even read old fashioned newspapers sometimes. But most of the news I read is in digital newsprint.

So yes, people are reading a lot of text on the internet. But what is the quality of our reading online? I suspect that it leaves a lot to be desired, and that the ease of obtaining information, of viewing different texts so quickly, has some significant problems, in addition to the virtues it possesses. For one thing, the sheer amont of information I can access tends to encourage me to skip about from one source to another. In fact, at this very moment, I have three browser windows open, and have already flipped back to them while writing this. It's so easy to do; if I grow bored, however briefly, of one thing I am doing or reading, I can switch over to something. Needless to say, this does not encourage good analysis or comprehension of the text being read. I am not fixed to a specific text; I can go from one text to another entirely different and unrelated one in a single moment. A hyperlink in the text can carry me off to something unrelated and divert my previous focus entirely. However, I should note, this same thing can also be good, by relating one text to another relevant one; hyperlinks can serve as expanded footnotes.

3. In the same vein the nature of online reading tends to encourage a skimming of the material. I find this particularly true in reading blogs; I am tempted to read through a given text very quickly and then examine the comments- I am reluctant to tackle a large block of text in many cases. What material I often read I read very quickly, without good apprehension of what is being said. As my attention is diverted by the aforementioned plethora of choices in text I am less likely to actually digest and assimilate what I am reading, except in a rather superficial manner.

4. Finally, switching from reading to writing, while the internet can encourage writing, it can also encourage bad writing. This seems particularly true with e-mail and such; the rapidity of the medium seems to encourage it. But this can also be true in the realm of online publishing, whether through blogs or 'conventional' web sites. One can write something and immediately publish it, bringing it to the reading public. Not only is it fast, but one can write about anything and make it public. Again, this is one of the good features of the internet, but it can also be abused badly.

All of this is to suggest closer attention to our usage of the internet- and in saying it, I am very much preaching to myself! The internet is an excellent tool, but like any other tool it can be abused (and I have barely mentioned matters of content- that would be a whole other post). The internet is by nature fast-paced, but we can, through disciplined and thoughtful use of it, employ it for good.

Some Thoughts on the Clash of Civilizations

2006-02-25T18:29:00.000-06:00

It is in vogue today to discuss- or deny or modify- the idea of a looming, or ongoing, clash of civilizations, between the Western world on the one hand and the Islamic world on the other. Now, I am neither an expert on Western civilization or Islamic civilization, though both are of great interest to me, particularly regarding the interaction and conflict of the two. The following then are a few thoughts bearing upon this question.

There are a number of things that make speaking of a clash of civilizations problematic. One of these is the nature of the two civilizations supposed to be in confrontation; I would argue that they are both diminished and are not entirely the object of confrontation. This is particularly accute with regards to the Islamic world, and is in fact one of the primary reasons for radical Islamic militancy.

The dar al-Islam, the realm of Islam, saw an absolutely incredible rise from its humble beginnings in a small group of followers around Mohammed in Medina, to a point in which a single, more or less cohesive Islamic culture stretched from northern India to Spain. Within fifty years of the Prophet's death his follower had taken vast swaths of the Byzantine Empire and nearly all of the Sasanid; the rest of the Sasanid would quickly fall and Persian culture become deeply imbedded with Islam (though never losing its own identity, it should be noted). In 710-711 Muslim forces had crossed into Hispania, which they would largely control for centuries, the final Muslim rulers of Granada not being expelled until 1492. By 1453 the Byzantine Empire would be completely extinguished by the Ottoman Turks; they in turn were pounding at the gates of Vienna in 1529. Mighty Egypt was one of the early gains of Islam, and out of it various great empires would arise from the Fatamids to Saladin to the Mulmuks; the later wielded enough power to turn back the seemingly unstoppable Mongols. The Crusader incursions never amounted to a particularly great threat to Islam; their kingdom never extended beyond a rather narrow strip of Syria and Palestine and the short-lived County of Eddessa. By 1291 the last Crusader city was gone, and the Crusades faded from the Islamic memory- they were seen as rather insignificant in the face of a seemingly overwhelming Muslim superiority. In short, from the inception of Islam on it was able to expand and conquer at an incredible speed and over great distances.

In so doing it also developed uniquely Islamic cultures; cultures which cultivated high learning. It is almost cliche these days to mention, but a good bit of the West's knowledge of Aristotle would come via the Islamic world (assisted by the Jewish and Christian communities which remained within that realm). Cities were born and flourished; trade routes brought the wealth of the Far East into Islamic lands and contributed to great prosperity. It would not be unfair to say that in, say, the twelfth century, the heart of civilization in the western half of the known world lay in the Islamic lands.

But this all changed. The Ottomans, the great power of the Near East and Eastern Europe in the 14th through 16th centuries, gradually declined. They were unable, or unwilling, to keep up with the technological advancements of the West. Trade routes maintained through the Middle East were eclipsed by discoveries of a new world by the West; new forms of government and thinking were developed in Europe, and prosperity boomed there. The Islamic world largely remained in a sort of a stasis. This only grew worse with the advent of European empiralism, as Western powers- particularly in the aftermath of WWI and the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire- divided up the Islamic world into spheres of control.

It is out of this great shift in experience that modern Islamic radicalism operates. The Islamic world, over the past few centuries, underwent a fragmentation it had never experienced before; the once largely cohesive Islamic civilization was broken into pieces, something only excaberated by modern nationalism (often fueled by a perverse mix of jihad and various brews of Marxist thought). Various groups and regimes operate out of their own ideas and tendencies which are often markedly different from each other, more than would appear on the surface. Some of these differences follow fault lines laid down in the first century of Islam; others are of a more recent appearance. They all reflect a general experience of fragmentation in the Islamic world, one which is unlikely to change anytime soon. A good example of this can be found in the cycle of Sunni and Shia violence in Iraq that has been gripping headlines over the past few days. Such divisions date back a very long time, but they have been made even more accute with the rise of nationalism.

All of this is to say that there is less a clash of Islamic civilization- which is broken and fragmented- than a clash of certain tendencies within Islam against 'the West' (what exactly is meant by that could entail a great deal of discussion!). What does this mean practically? I think that one aspect is that there is no great Islamic power that can threaten the West in the way that, say, the Ottomans were doing in the 15th and 16th centuries, except perhaps Iran, but in a much more limited way. There simply is no unified Islamic force capable of massive overt acts of agression. There are, however, undercurrents in the Islamic world that can work violence both within the Islamic world and in the West. They tend to be very populist (with some exceptions- some of the elite of Saudi Arabia being one of them), which can prove very dangerous, though perhaps negating their longevity- but not erasing it, to be sure. Radical Islam does not represent the majority of Muslims or Islamic states- another rather cliche thing to say. However, it remains a potent force, precisely for the reasons of Islamic fragmentation and diminishing of civilization. The danger lies in such movements continuing to expand and inflame more and more of the Muslim world, with a goal of undoing that fragmentation and expanding the dar al-Islam once again. They would very much like to have a clash of civilizations, and the rebuilding of Islamic civilization is certainly on their to-do list. Unfortunately, its conception of Islamic civilization is unlikely to include much of Aristotle or Jewish scholars or fine art.

What then is going to happen in the Islamic world? I won't offer a prediction- one should always be wary of historians trying to predict the future; they haven't a very good record usually. However, I can say that the situation within Islam is very complex and hence very uncertain. The present day Islamic experience is in many ways novel; it is made all the more so by the ongoing influx of Muslim immigrants into the West, where they are often poor and marginalized. At any rate, if current trends continue, the next several years and probably decades will remain very interesting.

Joseph Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong

2006-02-22T17:32:00.000-06:00

Pope Benedict has proclaimed a number of new cardinals, including Joseph Zen of Hong Kong. The following are a couple of excerpts from a recent interview with Zen. He sounds pretty straightup legit; this is not someone who plays around with the reality of the Church in mainland China.

"For some time the Church has had a social doctrine, and especially since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has taken a great deal of interest in social issues. We have a great treasury of social teachings that shed light on Hong Kong’s new political situation. Consequently, almost without having planned, I have on various occasions expressed my critical opinion on local and central government matters that I felt required my intervention.

"As a result I have become something of a symbol of the freedom of speech that must be preserved in Hong Kong. We must make a balance sheet of my critical involvement in society and towards politics. I must say that we have done well to intervene. It was opportune and necessary. We have simply acted in line with the doctrine of the Church according to the wishes of the Holy See and in perfect accord with the Cardinal and Bishop John Tong. I do not regret my interventions. Also the Diocesan Synod has sanctioned our duty to speak out, to intervene critically in social issues, to express a prophetic role in society. I must say that this is not a pleasant thing, because when one intervenes to defend freedom and human rights, there are polemics, and this does not please some people. This is something that we take into account ahead of time. The criticisms that we have received do not scare me; what we have said publicly in criticism of those in power we had to say, and I think that the majority of the faithful agree with me."

*

"Above all, the Holy See must not forget to be firm. Beijing perhaps has a few illusions that the Holy See sooner or later might surrender and yield on some principles. But the Holy See cannot surrender; it is not possible to "sell" the rights of the Church. In this historical phase, Beijing is not showing much interest in having a treaty with the Roman Church."

St. Milburga of Wenlock

2006-02-22T17:12:00.000-06:00

Died c. 700 or 722; feast of the translation of her relics, June 25. The ruins of Wenlock Abbey in Shropshire, dating from the 11th century, remind us of Saint Milburga, whose name still lingers in that area. She was one of a family of eminent saints and belonged to the royal house of Mercia.

How often a good mother is blessed in her children! Her mother Domneva Domna Ebba or Ermenburga; f.d. November 19), princess of Kent, had three daughters: Milburga, Mildred (f.d. July 13), and Mildgytha (f.d. today), each of whom grew up to follow the pattern of her mother's faith, and each, after a life wholly devoted to Christ, was glorified as a saint.

Those were the days when the daughters of kings were proud and eager to dedicate their wealth and talents in Christian leadership and to pour out their youth and strength in the service of the Church. They founded and ruled great abbeys, taught the young, cared for the sick, and relieved the poor.

Milburga, like her mother before her, surrendered her high estate, forsook the luxury and comfort of her home, and counted it her highest privilege to serve God in a consecrated Christian life. Helped by her father, Merewald, an Anglian chieftain, and her uncle Wulfhere, king of Mercia, she founded the monastery of Wenlock, which was placed under the direction of Saint Botulf of East Anglia (f.d. June 17). Its first abbess was Liobsynde, a French nun from Chelles. Its second was Milburga, who was consecrated abbess by the Greek Archbishop Saint Theodore (f.d. September 19). It was no ordinary monastery; everything about it reflected the grace and fragrance of her own pure spirit. The gardens were full of the choicest flowers, the orchards bore the sweetest fruits, and within its walls was found, we are told, the very
peace of heaven.

By her sheer goodness Milburga converted many to the Christian faith, and this in a dark and primitive age when, outside the monastery walls, the countryside was wild and remote, and full of unknown dangers. One day, for example, on one of her errands of mercy, she was terrified by a neighbouring princeling who, wishing to marry her, intercepted her with a band of soldiers, but she providentially escaped. In her flight she crossed a small stream called the Corve, and he, following, found when he reached it that the waters had risen and his plan was thwarted. The place where it happened it called to this day Stoke Saint Milburgh.

She loved flowers, birds (over which she had a mysterious power), country life, and country people, to sit and work in the sun and tend the herbs in her garden, and to visit in the villages around. People came to her with their troubles and ailments and ascribed to her miraculous cures. Milburga was venerated for her humility, holiness, the miracles she performed, and for the gift of levitation she possessed.

According to Boniface, the famous Vision of the Monk of Wenlock occurred during Milburga's abbacy. Goscelin also preserved her testament, which is a long, apparently authentic list of lands that belonged to her at her death.

When she was on her deathbed, she said to her followers, "I have beenmother to you. I have watched over you like a mother, with pious care. And in mercy, I go the way of all flesh. A higher call invites me." One by one they said farewell, gave her the sacraments, and after her death buried her body near the altar of the abbey.

{Via Celt-Saints List}

Life in Exile

2006-02-09T01:52:00.000-06:00

'Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.'

St. John 12:42-43

1. The ancient and medieval world was one in which a person's role and place in society, within the structure of the community, was everything. Personal identity was wedded to social and communal structure in a manner we really cannot begin to appreciate. To be outside of the community in which someone was born into and lived was to lose one's identity, to be deprived of being in a manner. Human life was deeply bound to the social structure, be it the polis or family-group or synagogue. For Aristotle, true virtue was impossible outside of the polis. In the medieval age one was identified by feudal obligations and ties of kinship, established in a specific place. To detach oneself from that place and ties and obligations was to enter a no-man's land devoid of personal identity. This was the place of the peregrinati, the monks who embraced a voluntary exile, often on the Continent, either as penance or for missions or both. While this action in some ways, through the monastic structure, came to be an avenue of identity in itself, it remained throughout a radical detachment from normal means of identity and role.

2. In St. John's Gospel this theme of exile, of being separated from one's community and hence role and identity, is particularly important. It demonstrates in a concrete manner what is described elsewhere in the New Testament as the life of exile, of pilgrimage, in pursuit of the heavenly city, following Christ Himself, Who had 'no place to lay His head.' In St. John, the danger is one of being put out of the synagogue: entailing a severance from not only the religious community but also from the fullness of society and community in general. It was to be cast out of the proper parameters of society, to become a refugee and exile.

3. The danger, or rather, the call, of exile, is repeated throughout the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. It is foreshadowed in the wandering of Abraham, and the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt; in the flight of prophets from angry monarchs; and in a way the voluntary exile of St. John the Forerunner into the desert, outside the bounds of ordinary society. These were all literal flights, phyisical peregrinations from one place and its community to another. The citizen of the new Christian polis, however, often continues to exist within his old polis, within the old community, but his role in it is fundamentally transformed. He is henceforth a pilgrim, a wander, whose true role and identity is bound up in Christ and the community insituted in Him, the Church. His old identities, his old status within his 'natural' community, is radically reconfigured as a result. We can no longer see ourselves as citizens of whatever order we happen to be in, who just happen to be Christian. To be an exile, in Scriptural terms, means a radical relalignment and understanding of role and identity.

4. The reconfiguration of the Christian's role and identity, against his continued life in 'the world,' introduces one of the great tensions of Christian life. Now, it may result that this state of exile is very tangiably manifested, as in the man cast out after his healing by Christ, into a very literal exile. It may mean a voluntary exile like the missionary-saints of old like St. Colum Cille or St. Boniface. It could mean martyrdom, as the order of the social structures resists the existence of this new Kingdom and its citizens. For the Kingdom of Heaven can be very subversive to the structure of the world; Christ came to 'destroy the works of the devil,' and the manifestations of those works may well resist violently against His Body. Yet whatever the tensions that arise, the Christian is called to an ongoing life of exile, of citizenship in a Heavenly City not yet fully attained to. One of our great tasks comes in finding how to work this out in our present lives, in situations as varied as the people embraced by this new and radically-different Kingdom of God.

Thoughts on War and Peace

2006-02-01T19:35:00.000-06:00

Lately I have been thinking about war, peace, interventionism, and such things. Obviously they are difficult to avoid in light of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, and the spectre of conflict with Iran. In Moral Philosophy we engaged in a rousing discussion on Tuesday, which prompted me to write down a few thoughts relevant to the issue. The following are quite disjointed; I make no claims to possessing a systematic Christian ethic of war and peace, or of government for that matter. Views I once felt quite settled in I have lately begun to reconsider.

1. War is never "good." There are perhaps "just" wars in that the reasons for war were just; but the prosecution of war is always dogged by ethical fuzziness and outright evil acts, no matter how just the cause may be. Passions run extremely hot in warfare, and decisions cannot be mulled over, theologians are ethicists consulted, in the midst of combat. Further, the very fact that humans slay humans in warfare runs counter to the ontology of man as created by God. Man is not intended to kill other men; the provision of war is economia for a fallen world. But war and killing, even if justified, still have a serious impact upon the human person. In the ancient Church this was recognized in the canons that temporarily barred from the Eucharist those who had taken human life in war. Likewise, other canons prohibit the giving of holy orders to any who have taken a human life, whether it was justified or not. There is a basic ontological problem encountered in the act of killing; while it may be "allowable" in God's economia for a fallen world, it never becomes a "good," properly speaking.

2. Perhaps the greatest concern I have with the so-called “war on terror” is the extreme broadness of the term’s possible definitions. When does a “war on terror” end? It is an extremely open-ended term, capable of justifying war for an undetermined and essentially unlimited period: war without end. This is deeply problematic for a number of reasons. One of these is the danger posed to the national consciousness when the state of war becomes daily business. The enormity of war is reduced to merely another item in the twenty-four hour news cycle; it has its slot alongside run-away brides and stock prices. Waging war becomes just another category on the national agenda. Military violence becomes internalized; it is everyday policy, not the occasional necessary exception. This internalization of violence goes alongside the normalization of violence and sexual depravity so prevalent in modern American society. As many have noted, the prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq were in many ways manifestations of the dark undercurrents of American life: undercurrents not very far at all from the “mainstream.”

3. One of the problems with the so-called "good wars" is that upon examination they almost always are found to have had either issues of justification, or issues with their opperation and results. For example, one grows up in America hearing about World War II as being a "good war." However, not only were some of the tactics of the Allies arguably deeply unethical (such as the mass bombing of civilian centres), but the war ended with Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the immiment fall of China and eventually much of Southeast Asia to Communism; not to mention the extreme problems involved with having a state as brutal as the Soviet Empire as a principal ally. Certainly, one may argue that these things were unavoidable for the winning of the war; however, they remain as examples of the dirtiness and nastiness of war, and hence the extreme caution upon which a nation should approach it with.

4. Humanitarian interventionism has become rather vogue in recent years. It would seem to present a particularly altruistic justification for war. But there are problems with the idea. One of these is a problem that bedevils act-utilitarianism: one cannot know the results of an action until after those results have transpired. One may be able to predict certain results with a near absolute certainty, but with “human events” it is a much more difficult matter. History can provide a guide, to be sure, but history does not repeat itself. History is a matter of contingency, of almost inumerable variables, for it is acted out by often unstable and uncertain actors. No bureaucratic prophet can foresee with any true certainty the results of his nation’s action. This is particularly true concerning long-term results. We cannot safely predict at the present what sort of course the fledgling Iraqi republic will take: will it devolve into ethnic conflict, into a Sharia-dominated Islamic state a la Iran, or into a nation along the lines of modern Turkey- or something else entirely? We cannot know. We cannot know before taking the military action whether we will merely increase the misery and oppresion felt by the people of the subject nation.

5. Further, we cannot truly know whether or not the people of said nation desire our military intervention. Let us suppose that they truly are oppressed, and desire liberation. Would they wish for a bloody and perhaps protracted conflict to come upon them through outside intervention? Is there not a serious moral dilemna in introducing violence and turmoil through an outside force for the stated goal of uninvited liberation? This is not to question the altruistic motives of the interventionist force, but instead to confront the problems inherent in such intervention. Another problem is the simple fact that military might is often an inadequate resolution to deeply complicated issues, particularly ones in which faith, ideology, or ethnicity- or all three!- are strongly entwined into the problem.

6. This should lead us to consider what the Christian knows to be the truth about the world: the complications and evils of it find their ultimate resolution only in Christ. War is an imperfect measure wielded by imperfect governments whose operations will always carry difficulties and contradictions, as a result of existing in a fallen world. The ultimate Christian response must always be the presenting of the Gospel of Christ as the way to the true peace and healing of the world. The Church must offer into every human conflict the strange paradigm of the forgiving God, the Savior Who saves by giving up His life to the violent. While the Church need not embrace pacificism, it must strenuously avoid viewing the State and its means as ultimate or as a means of man’s salvation.

St. Thomas Aquinas on Prudentia

2006-01-20T00:02:00.000-06:00

{I don't think I have ever blogged one of my school papers before, but now that I get to take fun courses I want to take in history and philosophy, I also get to write papers about things that I very much care about. Hoorah!

The following is a paper I wrote for Moral Philosophy; this is the longer version, actually, the one that I turned in was trimmed down.}

Prudentia in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Account of the Virtues
St. Thomas Aquinas regarded the discipline of moral philosophy as one of great importance, recommending that the student turn his attention to it before the study of metaphysics. This should not suggest that his moral philosophy and account of the virtues are simple- for here as elsewhere he seems to have little use for Ockham’s Razor. However, as the strands of Aquinas’s thought are unwoven, one finds that they form a cognizant whole, one carefully and thoughtfully developed and presented. When considering virtue in Aquinas, the structure that surrounds it must also be considered.

In St. Thomas Aquinas’s moral philosophy the virtues have a prominent place, within the framework of his understanding of the human person as a moral agent, whose specifically human acts, properly stated, are moral acts. Aquinas presents a view of man as a moral, rational, willing agent, whose primary disposition is to seek goodness, as presented to him by his intellect (meaning that the intellect can err in its definition of goodness and take something that is evil to be good, and vice versa) and chosen by the will. The virtues are the operative habits, or dispositions, that order the complex of intellect and will in the soul toward making proper choices and hence actions for the good: “Now virtue causes an ordered operation. Therefore virtue itself is an ordered disposition of the soul.”

The virtue of prudentia- variously translated prudence, wisdom, or good sense- is given by Aquinas special place in his account of the virtues and human acts. Prudentia is perhaps best translated “good sense,” as suggested by McCabe, but even that term does not quite capture the full meaning it holds for Aquinas. In order to retain this sense of the word’s greater meaning I have opted to leave it untranslated. In order to understand the concept of prudentia in Aquinas’s overall scheme of moral philosophy, we must first examine his understanding of the will and intellect, the structure of human acts, and the essence of the virtues, taking note of prudentia’s bearing and importance in each of these elements. Finally the specific nature of prudentia itself and its overall place in the frame of moral philosophy must be considered.

Intellect, Will, and Act

Intellect and will are two closely connected powers of the soul; Aquinas sometimes speaks of the will as being in the intellect, for example, and his concept of human freedom of will is developed in a system of intellect-will interaction. Thus, the will does not operate as an independent entity but only in conjunction with the intellect, which presents to the will a good to be sought; this good functions as an end, allowing Aquinas to say: “For this reason the intellect is said to move the will not as an efficient cause but as a final cause.” The will is the principle of appetite, of desire; the intellect presents it with an “intellectively cognized appetible,” the good to be sought, which the will then acts upon once it has accepted it.

This does not mean, however, that the will must always automatically choose the single good examined by the intellect. Only in two cases, where the intellectively cognized appetible is irresistible, is the will absolutely determined by the intellect. The first of these is happiness, which the will always seeks (though obviously under many different conceptions!). The only other absolutely constraining good is the vision of God, which, once it is achieved in its perfection, can never be rejected (the impossibility of the rejection of the good in those enjoying the divine vision is due to their absolute clear view of the good, and hence the impossibility of mistaking anything else for it).

Aquinas notes, “The root of liberty is the will as the subject thereof; but it is the reason as its cause. For the will can tend freely towards various objects, precisely because the reason can have various perceptions of good. Hence philosophers define the free-will as being ‘a free judgment arising from reason,’ implying that reason is the root of liberty.” Thus while the intellect, or reason, is the “root of liberty,” it can have “various perceptions of good” between which the will must choose, or decide to consider the good presented further; it may choose not to think about the thing at hand at all, or in some other way move the intellect. “A man considers something actually because he wills to do so.” Will and reason, as previously noted, form a whole; neither are autonomous powers: “Command is an act of the reason presupposing, however, an act of the will…. The reason reasons about willing, and the will wills to reason, the result is that the act of the reason precedes the act of the will, and conversely.”

The will’s reasoned capacity (Aquinas also refers to it as intellective appetite) of choosing between different goods presented by the intellect is most evident in his description of the stages of a human act. After the will, presented with an appetible good by the intellect, has chosen it is an end, it decides to act upon it. In order to do so it must often choose (electio) between competing means of achieving the end; the will examines each presented means and accepts one of them, which it then employs through commanding the act, whether external or internal. Electio, and all acts of will, depend upon cognized internal principles contained within the intellect (virtue being a possible “principle of action”). Prudentia is particularly important in the choosing of the different means to the desired end; in fact, as we shall see, the concern of prudentia is with these means as opposed to the ascertaining of ends. But first let us consider the idea of virtue and its place in this apparatus of human intellect and will.

The Definition and Essence of Virtue

“A human virtue is any habit perfecting a human being so that it acts well.” This is one of the definitions Aquinas offers of virtue; in his defining virtue he ultimately offers a synthesis of the Aristotelian definition and the Augustinian, with the Augustinian definition becoming the center under which Aristotle’s account is placed and interpreted. Aristotle offered this definition of virtue: “Moral virtue is a habit of choosing the mean appointed by reason as a prudent man should appoint it”; he also defined virtue as “that which makes its possessor good, and his work good likewise.”

The Augustinian understanding of virtue was summed up in the following excerpt from Peter Lombard’s Sentences: “Virtue is a good quality of mind, by which one lives rightly and which no one uses badly, that God alone works in man.” In some aspects Aristotle and Augustine agree, but in several they diverge strikingly. The statement that virtue is a “good quality” Aquinas modifies by rendering the word “good” analogically, “because by it [virtue] something is good.” Regarding the matter of God’s place and hence the idea of infused virtue- that which “God alone works in man”- they are particularly divergent; Aristotle clearly has no such conception. Aquinas resolves this dilemma by establishing all of the virtues around the theological, or infused, virtues, which are specially granted by God to man, and by which all virtues, and hence human action, guided by prudentia, are oriented towards God. Aquinas upholds the infused virtues and the role of God’s causation in all of the virtues: “Infused virtue is caused in us by God without any action on our part, but not without our consent… As to those things that are done by us, God causes them in us, yet not without action on our part, for He works in every will and in every nature.”

The virtue that leads the direction and orientation to all of the virtues and hence gives their unity is prudentia: “Right reason in matters of prudence is included in the definition of moral virtue, not as part of its essence, but as something belonging by way of participation to all the moral virtues, in so far as they are all under the direction of prudence.”

Virtue in the Intellect and Will

The virtues operate through the powers of the soul: “all operation proceeds from the soul through a power.” But which powers? Aquinas distinguishes between the different powers of the soul, and contends that a virtue cannot be in two powers at once, in the same way. He qualifies by saying that a virtue, while resting in one power primarily, can extend to others “by a kind of diffusion… in so far as one power is moved by another.” A virtue may exist in the will, which then employs the other powers by moving them to meet the necessary end by the chosen means. Prudentia is again seen to be a special case, having the reason or intellect as subject yet being primarily concerned with the appetite, that is, the will.

In fact, Aquinas contends that while the virtues of the intellect can properly be called virtues, they are not virtues absolutely. These virtues consist in an “aptness” for doing something or a type of knowledge; they are the sciences and arts (art being “right reason about certain works to be made”), the virtues of the intellect being further divided into those of the speculative intellect and the practical intellect. While being operative habits of the mind (operative even in the case of the speculative intellect, which must consider truth, an operation, even if it does not employ it) and hence properly virtues, they cannot be regarded as absolute virtues. Aquinas points out that while we may speak of a good blacksmith or a good writer, for example, we do not mean anything specifically moral by it, except in an analogical sense. These individuals have a certain capacity (facultus), which they may or may not use well (or may choose not to use at all); but considered in itself a virtue such as the art of blacksmithing and writing is a good analogically, and is not a virtue absolutely.

Aquinas makes two exceptions to this general rule: faith, whose subject is the speculative intellect, and prudentia, whose subject is the practical intellect. These are virtues absolutely, alongside the other moral virtues whose subject lies in the will. Aquinas affirms that the will is a proper subject of virtues, namely, “those which direct man’s affections to God or his neighbor”; hence the virtues of the will are virtues in the absolute sense, because they are habits whose inclination is to action. Prudentia, despite coming under the practical intellect, is also a virtue absolutely because its inclination is to action, namely, the selection of appropriate means to be done in accordance with reaching a certain end.

Prudentia

Aquinas begins his discussion of prudentia by asking whether it can be distinguished from the virtue of art. Yes, it can, he says, because art provides the ability, whereas prudentia confers not only the ability, but also the use to do a good work. For prudentia, though it is, as noted above, a virtue of the intellect, “regards the appetite, since it presupposes the rectitude of the appetite.” What does this mean? Aquinas compares prudentia to the virtues of the speculative intellect. They operate from certain principles, employing reason to argue from these principles (perceived through the virtue of understanding) to its conclusions. Prudentia, on the other hand, concerns itself with ends, which are provided by the appetite. For prudentia to function properly the will must be righteous; it must be set upon the right ends: “It is requisite for prudence, which is right reason about things to be done, that man be well disposed with regard to ends; and this depends on the rectitude of his appetite.” And prudentia absolutely considered regards man’s entire life, as it deals with man’s final end.

It does not, as Aquinas makes clear, concern itself with apprehending that end, or any end; “It is requisite… that man be well disposed with regard to means.” The will comes to intend an end (intentio finis) upon being attracted to a good cognized by the intellect. Once the will is set upon an end it can then employs prudentia in reasoning well over the means to achieve that end.

Is prudentia really necessary for life? Certainly, says Aquinas: for we may possess a good end and be inclined to it, but unless we are able to employ right reason to achieve that end, it does us no good. A man may have, say, justice, and thus desire the good of his neighbor, but unless he is guided by prudentia, and takes counsel of its reason, he may arrive at disastrous ends in trying to do good for his neighbor. Prudentia is proper reason- good sense- about how to achieve the ends desired by the will. It is necessary because of the will’s freedom, for, as noted above, the will is not bound absolutely to pursue any single good, save that of happiness and the perfected vision of God. Nor is it usually bound to pursue any single means (unless only one means to the end exists). Thus prudentia may be found to operate in a very wide sphere, once it is oriented towards man’s final end. Unlike theoretical reasoning, which involves things that are as they must be, the practical reasoning of prudentia concerns contingent things, ends with many possible means of attaining them.

Ultimately we find that prudentia guides us in seeking the final end of life, which lies in God. Once the intellect has apprehended the proper end of man, prudentia directs the virtues of the will in reaching it. It brings all of the virtues together, giving the unity necessary for virtue to be regarded in some way as one, and orients them towards God, together with the infused, theological virtues. This we may regard as the “grand” position of prudentia; but it is just as much concerned with the “ordinary” decisions to be made in every-day life (though of course Aquinas would caution us that nothing is to be separated from our ultimate end), and thus requires us to be aware of things, to use our sensory facilities well in conjunction with good reason. It is, as its definition would suggest, an imminently practical virtue, one essential to living a virtuous life- which, Aquinas would also assure us, is the only sort of life worth living.

{Note that in my actual paper I employ copious footnotes; but I've no idea how to create footnotes on Blogger. The following bibliography must suffice.}

Aquinas, St. Thomas. Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis.
New York: Random House, 1945.

Jordan, Mark D. “Theology and Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to
Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

McCabe, Herbert. “Aquinas on Good Sense.” In Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary
Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Brian Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

McInerny, Ralph. “Ethics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed.
Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Stump, Eleonore. “Aquinas’s Account of Freedom.” In Thomas Aquinas:
Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Brian Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Christ's Death Therefore is the Death of My Death

2006-01-19T00:32:00.000-06:00

"His death delivered us from death, his life from error, and his grace from sin. Indeed his death was victorious because of his justice, since in repaying what he had not stolen the Just Man aquired a perfect right to reclaim what he had lost. As for his life, it constituted for us by its wisdom a model and mirror of life and knowledge. And his grace is grace indeed, as has been said, forgave sin by that very power which is able to do whatever it wills. Christ's death therefore is the death of my death, because he died that I might live. How could someone for who Life died fail to be alive? How can anyone still be afraid of going astray in the knowledge of life and reality when Wisdom is his guide? Again, how can anyone be guilt whom Justice has absolved? In the Gospel he showed himself to us as Life when he said, I am the Life. As for the two others, we have the testimony of the Apostle who said: He is become for us Justice and Wisdom unto God the Father."

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood

Light in January

2006-01-17T00:34:00.000-06:00

Hattiesburg is not a large city- though it is large for rural Mississippi- nor is it a particularly old one, especially to someone whose idea of 'old' is fifteenth century at least... But there are some wonderful old buildings- churches, homes, and others- scattered around, with a surprising range of architectural styles, and in different levels of upkeep and decay. Last Saturday I set out with my camera in tow to photograph a few of them; the overcast morning turned to a bright and rather warm day that we in the Deep South enjoy (we shall forget our winter-time joy come July...).

The old Hattiesburg High School, built circa 1922. A really remarkable building, it is now falling to ruin, the last business to more or less occupy it having vacated some time back. I have heard that the University of Southern Mississippi intends to do something with it, which would be wonderful. They had best do something soon though.

This is Bay Street Presbyterian Church, built somewhere around 1900. Absolutely beautiful church; the tower- or steeple I suppose- when it fills with light is magnificent, though my camera refused to capture it to my satisfaction.

The plaque on the gate identified this as the Turner House, built in 1902. Very well kept up, with a hedge and gate. And columns. What more could you need?

Bay Street again, on black-and-white, looking rather epic.

St. Fursey of East Anglia

2006-01-16T14:06:00.000-06:00

"He had made a vow to spend his life as a pilgrim for love of our Lord, and to go wherever God should call him. On his arrival in the province of the East Angles, he was honorably recieved by the king, and preached the Gospel as he always did. Inspired by the example of his goodness and the effectiveness of his teaching, many unbelievers were converted to Christ, and those who already believed were drawn to greater love and faith in Him."

St. Bede the Venerable, Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Wealth & Poverty

2006-01-11T23:48:00.000-06:00

One of the things that is always somewhat unsettling when I read the Gospels is Jesus' frequent admonition to 'sell all you have and give to the poor'; the most memorable example I suppose would be the story of the rich young man. But all through the Gospels Jesus confronts those with wealth, and tells them troubling things like 'sell all you have,' 'how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven!' and the like. And if He does not bid something as drastic as selling all one has, then He says things just as condemnatory towards attachment to wealth, and gives the distinct impression that if it is possible to possess wealth and still be good, it is a difficult thing. For the pleasures of wealth and the dangerous attachment that wealth breeds in our hearts is deeply ensnaring. We are told to give to those who have no cloak and who have nothing to eat, if it is in our power to do so. Thus there is a two-fold force to Jesus' teaching on money: wealth is dangerous because it can lead to attachment exclusive of God and His Kingdom; and we are to use what wealth we have to help the poor, the hungry, the sick.

But what does this mean to us, dwelling in the West in this prosperous progressive era, with our iPods and laptops and cars and cappachinos? Shouldn't I probably feel just a little guilty and more than a little hypocritical, sitting here at a private college with my computer on my highspeed Internet connection? How do I justify the comfortable and affluent (by almost any standard of almost any era or place) middle-class life I lead? I can't plead ignorance. I grew up hearing the story of the rich young man, the story of Zacchaeus running with joy to greet Jesus at his house and giving away half his wealth outright- these stories form part of my consciousness. And I can't pretend to not know what poverty looks like. I've seen it with my eyes- on the other side of the globe, two blocks down from my school, down the road from my home. I cannot close my eyes and make it go away. What am I to do? I am not asking 'What should the State do?' I am not even asking 'What should the Church do?', though both of those are relevant questions. But Jesus confronts each of us and bids us give up everything and follow Him. We cannot relegate that upon the State, or even upon the Church.

Of course, I jump to my own defense: I try to buy my clothes at the good-will store, I always get water at resturants and eat cheap (usually), I rarely go to movies, etc. I give to charity, more than most people, surely! I even do some volunteer work every week, for at least a couple of hours. And here's the clincher: I turned down one private college in favour of a not-as-expensive private college. Whatever. In reality I am just as much a consumerist who loves his luxuries as the next guy. I just have a guilty conscience sometimes and have to salve it occasionally.

So how am I to live out Jesus' call to seeming poverty, or at least an attitude and way of life radically divergent from the lifestyle I now lead? Do we water down the teachings that burn like fire when we take them seriously? I do not think that Jesus is seeking to lay down some hard and fast rule for everyone, ie, everybody must sell everything and become a wandering monk preaching the Gospel. But He is surely calling us to a radical re-evalution of how we live our lives and spend our money; what we are seeking and living for. I am not living this. How to live it- I want to know, and I want to live it. Though, I am always adding, not now...

So as not to leave this post too open-ended, I leave off with a story from the life of St. John the Almsgiver. I think it speaks for itself, and urges us to take the difficult teachings of Jesus seriously:

Another good habit this Saint also adopted, namely sleeping on the cheapest of beds and using only very poor coverings in his own cell. One of the city's landowners once went into the Patriarch's room and saw that he was only covered with a torn and worn quilt, so he sent him a quilt costing thirty-six nomismata and besought him earnestly to cover himself with that in memory, he said, of the giver.

John took and used it for one night because of the giver's insistences but throughout the night he kept saying to himself (for so his chamber-attendants related), 'Who shall say that humble John'-for he ever called himself that-'was lying under a coverlet costing thirty-six nomismata whilst Christ's brethren are pinched with cold? How many are there at this minute grinding their teeth because of the cold? and how many have only a rough blanket half below and half above them so that they cannot stretch out their legs but lie shivering, rolled up like a ball of thread? How many are sleeping on the mountain without food or light, suffering twofold pangs from cold and hunger?

How many would like to be filled with the outer leaves of the vegetables which are thrown away from my kitchen? How many would like to dip their bit of bread into the soup-water which my cooks throw away? How many would like even to have a sniff at the wine which is poured out in my wine-cellar? How many strangers are there at this hour in the city who have no lodging-place but lie about in the market-place, perhaps with the rain falling on them? How many are there who have not tasted oil for one month or even two? How many have no second garment either in summer or winter and so live in misery?

And yet you, who hope to obtain everlasting bliss, both drink wine and eat large fishes and spend your time in bed, and now in addition to all those evils you are being kept warm by a coverlet worth thirty-six nomismata. Verily, if you live like that and pass your life in such ease, do not expect to enjoy the good things prepared for us on high; but you will certainly be told, as was that other rich man: "Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, but the poor evil things; and now they are comforted, but thou art in anguish?" [Luke 16:25] Blessed be God ! You shall not cover humble John a second night. For it is right and acceptable to God that one-hundred and forty-four of your brothers and masters should be covered rather than you, one miserable creature.'

For four rough blankets could be bought for one nomisma. Early on the following morning, therefore, he sent it to be sold, but the man who had given it saw it and bought it for thirty-six nomismata and again brought it to the Patriarch. But when he saw it put up for sale again the next day he bought it once more and carried it to the Patriarch and implored him to use it. When he had done this for the third time the Saint said to him jokingly, 'Let us see whether you or I will give up first!'

An Antithesis

2006-01-11T00:43:00.000-06:00

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers."

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

St. Matthew 21.12-14

I was reading through this chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel the other day, and this short passage seemed to stand out to me; I had never noticed the verse that follows right after the account of the cleansing of the Temple. It is, I suppose, not terribly exceptional for the course of the whole narrative; Jesus is frequently recorded healing the blind and lame. Yet I could not help noticing the antithesis presented by this short passage: the Temple is filled with the money-changers and merchants, changing the Temple from a place of prayer and love of God to the making of money- for more-or-less religious purposes, nicely absorbed into a structure of wealth-accumulation. Jesus calls them 'robbers'; He was often insensitive, we would say. After all, weren't these men just fulfilling the Israelite Dream? They had to make a living too, surely? He calls them robbers, and not only that, but drives them out of the Temple, calling their wedding of faith and commerce (in which the commerce is more in view it would seem) fatally incompatible.

That part we all remember and know, of course, but notice also what happens immediately afterwards: the sacred precint, cleansed of the robbers, is filled with the sick. The blind and lame, the people who probably weren't going to be filling the coffers of the Merchants of Faith, come to Jesus, come into the Temple. They are healed there. Christ has turned the merchants and money-changers out and brought the people at the edge of society in. The respectable- albiet ethically shady- tradesmen are gone, replaced by the dirty, the sick, the 'useless.' But the Temple is being turned back to its true purpose: a place of prayer, by people who are dirty, sick, and useless, the downcast, the poor.

I cannot but think of the image of the Church as the 'hospital of souls'; not another means of transaction and capital-building, or of securing one's place in Society, but the place for the blind and lame to be healed. And we ourselves are, as St. Maximus Confessor noted, images of the Church; we too must seek to become places of refuge and healing, for ourselves and for those around us.

Happy Belated New Year & Epiphany

2006-01-06T01:55:00.000-06:00

Well, 2005 is gone and another year has come. And I'm already back at school. We run on a trimester system, which means this is the second trimester, and midterms are next week, which seems rather hard to believe; this school year is half-way out. My classes are all enjoyable, and keeping me busy with copious reading and some writing- the writing load isn't too bad this term. At the moment I am working on a paper concerning the place of prudentia in St. Thomas Aquinas's account of the virtues. In order to do so I have been reading quite a bit of the Angelic Doctor lately, along with his modern commentators. I think I know my function; I'm still not quite sure about prime matter and hylomorphism. Actually, Aquinas is a far more refreshing philosopher/theologian (as he never imagined a strict dichotomy between philosophy and theology) than most modern ones.

I'm going to forego ruminations on the now departed year; other than to say it was quite a year, for me anyway. I saw, experienced, and ate things I never imagined I would. Some of them I would love to seek out again; some not so much! But I can only thank God for the blessing bestowed, and fault myself for the blessings squandered. May He give us all guidance in the coming year (including the virtue of prudentia!).

Oh, the picture above was taken at the Yunnan Ethnic Minority Theme-Park place (something like that) in Kunming, China. I realized I had not posted it on here, and as it has to be one of my favorite photos (that I took anyway) from 2006, I had to post it. Yes I took it; and no, I'm really not sure what the sign is supposed to say, or how the unfortunate translators arrived at such a, um, interesting translation. I don't know; one might offer it an interpretation by which it encourages the creation of community, saying that we are nothing with our heads apart, but caution- the realization of the dangers of the world- compels us to come together. We must cast off our selfish withdrawl from the Other and unite. Of course, what the sign doesn't say is that we need a greater Principle of Unity than those provided by the world and the natural order.

What Is This Word?

2005-12-26T21:38:00.000-06:00

John’s view of the incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, strikes at the very root of that liberal denial which characterised mainstream theology thirty years ago and whose long-term effects are with us still. I grew up hearing lectures and sermons which declared that the idea of God becoming human was a category mistake. No human being could actually be divine; Jesus must therefore have been simply a human being, albeit no doubt (the wonderful patronizing pat on the head of the headmaster to the little boy) a very brilliant one. Phew; that’s all right then; he points to God but he isn’t actually God. And a generation later, but growing straight out of that school of thought, I have had a clergyman writing to me this week to say that the church doesn’t know anything for certain, so what’s all the fuss about? Remove the enfleshed and speaking Word from the centre of your theology, and gradually the whole thing will unravel until all you’re left with is the theological equivalent of the grin on the Cheshire Cat, a relativism whose only moral principle is that there are no moral principles; no words of judgment because nothing is really wrong except saying that things are wrong, no words of mercy because, if you’re all right as you are, you don’t need mercy, merely ‘affirmation’.

Read the Whole Thing:

Bishop N.T. Wright's Christmas Sermon

Via Titusonenine

Human Law Cannot Punish or Forbid All Evil Deeds

2005-12-22T16:26:00.000-06:00

As Augustine says, human law cannot punish or forbid all evil deeds, since, while aiming at doing away with all evils, it would do away with many good things, and woudl hinder the advance of the common good, which is necessary for human living. IN order, therefore, that no evil might remain unforbidden and unpunished, it was necessary for the divine law to supervene, whereby all sins are forbidden.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Qestion 91, Article 4

Santa Claus Putting the Smackdown on Heresy

2005-12-18T20:16:00.000-06:00

And we'll need new songs and TV specials ("Santa Claus Is Coming to Slap," "Deck the Apollinarian with Bats of Holly," "Frosty the Gnostic," "How the Arian Stole Christmas," "Rudolph the Red Knows Jesus").

Department store Santas should ask the children on their laps if they have been good, what they want for Christmas, and whether they understand the Two Natures of Christ. The Santas should also roam the shopping aisles, and if they hear any clerks wish their customers a mere "Happy Holiday," give them a slap.

Slappy Holiday

Wordsmithing

2005-12-06T14:39:00.000-06:00

The following are a couple of poems of sorts I have written in the past few months, and for some reason I had the thought of sharing them with the world. I make no pretensions to poetic genius, and welcome all cold and ruthless critique of my word-smithing. But only if you are nice about it.

Apokalupsis

And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
And all the fallen will stand upright again
When we all are gathered in.
And all the fragments thrown to the wind
Will be winnowed and set right again.

I am earthborn yet have been birthed
In the watery blood-washed womb.
Jesus grabbed my arm and turned my shoulder
And He stood me on my trembling feet
From the redwash clay whence I came.
For these many years under a faltering sun
Have I plowed in my father’s furrows
And broken through to heaven’s hold.
Drawing near to death He drew me back
My sight shorn down and gathered to a point.

My eyes are turned now to the eastern stage
Where rises the fire-flung colours of the breaking
Final evensong the herald of a dread epiphany.
I see the blood-wrung riders in the gathered dawn.
I see the spiraling choir frothing through the sky.
The sound of justice drawing near is broaching.
The air is heavy with the end:
Whirlwind loosed on the trembling earth
Whirlwind loosed in the hiding hearts.
I unafraid listen for the coming of that looming Day
When all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Ode for the Southern Great Plains

Trees not lonely but pulsing orbs
In the breathing brown soil undersky
Unfound reeling horizion bounds
Unbeaten for scope and span
Heavens held up gainsay their weight
Roiling beyond the beckoning strand
Where meets the fleeing field and over
Gold flecked-through rolling robe
The holt-cloaked wending watervein
Intone some secret of earth and wold
All is bound under water air fire
What eye and mind cannot contain
The Holy Spirit over all alone
Filling the far-flung out rising
Upwards by distance lands

Untitled American

I am an untitled-American side street wanderer
I do not wish I had another wish left to spend.
My passport fell from my hand in a broken city
I waded in through the muddied waterroad.
Heaven is always above and somewhere within
And the road goes by the ten thousand things.

Oxen watering on the terrace wander down,
I am looking up at lonely stars through
The lost city haze and wondering whether
I could see you again on the dusty roadside
With the pomegranates and woven rice paddies
Our hiding place in the far flung out fields.

Over in me no mountain falls far enough
No valley winds its neck into the clouds
High enough to bower me in its womb
No strange tongue or rhyme will heave
Me through and under forgetting night

I am still thinking of you while I watch
The last bus leave for the purpled embassy.

Hand to the Plow

2005-12-03T19:35:00.000-06:00

The new wave of arrests against underground priests is a failure, useless and childish. It only increases the number of sympathisers and vocations to the priesthood in the underground church. What is more, it pushes underground priests to seek greater co-operation with their counterparts in the official Church.

This, in short, is how Catholics see the latest arrests of underground priests in Hebei province: two priests on November 7; the Bishop of Zhengding Julius Jia Zhiguo (see photo) on November 9; six other priests on November 18.

All of them received the same treatment: “study sessions” consisting in endless hours of brainwashing to get them to join the Patriotic Association, the state-controlled organisation set up as a national Church separate from the Holy See.

The two priests arrested on November 7 were released but warned to “give up evangelising” and “go work on a farm”.

Still, hundreds of plain-clothed policemen have been sent out to monitor underground Catholic communities.

A priest from one of these communities told AsiaNews: “We shall not go back to till the soil. Times have changed and the way the government is treating the Church is childish. It only strengthens the faith and the enthusiasm of the faithful. It helps spread the Church’s influence more rapidly”.
Persecution strengthens underground Church in Hebei province

Cane Mill

2005-11-28T10:36:00.000-06:00

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I went with my father and little brother to visit a cane mill on the northern edge of Jones County. It's been in the same family for a couple generations at least, in various incarnations. The man who operates it now recieved the trade from his father, who recieved it from his uncle. He squeezes and cooks sugar cane, which is grown on a small-scale basis around here (sorghum replaces sugar cane in most of the country; we are near the northern limit of sugar cane here in Jones County), making molasses which they then sell to local folks.

The mill itself is a venerable piece of equipment, of unknown age. It squeezes the juices out, which are caught in a basin, which has a gravity feed pipe running down to the cooking vat, where the juice is cooked and comes out as molasses. That's the basic process: not complicated, and the machinery involved is decidely low-tech. The owner does the cooking, while a number of men from around Jones County help in the other details. I got to help feed the cane mill, a task made a little harder this year thanks to Hurricane Katrina bending all the sugar cane stalks over into arches.

There were two trailer loads of sugar cane to milled. The hurricane didn't manage to destroy the crop this year, just make them a little trickier to feed into the mill.

Cooking the cane juice. The vat is a home-made operation; the insulation along the joints is river clay.

Feeding the mill.

The juice flows over into the tank, then down the hill to the vat.

Resting from the day's labour.

Unlikely Allies

2005-11-21T23:01:00.000-06:00

Bush hails an unlikely ally in the land of Genghis Khan:

"Mongolia, which has been eager for closer military relations with the United States, sent about 120 soldiers to Iraq.

"Mr Bush said US forces were proud to serve with the "fearless warriors" of Mongolia and he specifically thanked two Mongolian soldiers for shooting a suicide bomber who had been trying to drive a truck full of explosives into a coalition army mess tent in southern Iraq.

"White House officials say that, per capita, only two countries - the United Kingdom and Denmark - have provided more troops, and the Mongolians have been rewarded with $11 million (£6.4 million) in US aid to improve their military forces."

Actually, it is quite reasonable for Mongolia to be seeking very close relations with the US, as a quick look at a world map will demonstrate. And I have to say, I for one am glad the Mongols are on our side. They conquered most of the known world, which isn't too bad of an accomplishment in my book. Granted, that may have been a few years back, but they still seem to be a very decent people.

If I get the chance, that region is the next part of the world I would like to visit- Mongolia, along with the northern teir of China and those hard to pronounce Central Asian republics.

Hoom-Hom

2005-11-17T18:53:00.000-06:00

I particularly like the Ents: an odd folk, to be sure, but with many excellent qualities, even if rapidity isn't one of them. It's usually not one of mine either- there are a few things, however, that can make me positively hasty. But not a terribly many.

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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Time and Sleep and Prayer

2005-11-16T21:47:00.000-06:00

It is dreadfully cliche to say that Americans are busy people. But it is true. And I am all too cupable in it: I have college, which means a good bit of time spent reading and studying and fretting over finals I didn't have time to study for because I was busy doing Other Things. These Other Things are of course all good and praiseworthy things: I'm really not that bad about flat out wasting time. I wake up reasonably early, and have a tendency to go to bed late (I am a college student after all). Perhaps the worst example of sheer useless use of time is my tendency to sometimes peruse the Internet late at night; but this is often, in my defense, because my roommate is watching television or something. But much of the time I have Important Things to do. For example, I spent this weekend at a forensics (speech and debate) tournament in Shreveport, Louisiana (our college did quite well, going up against much larger universities at that; my debate partner and I did moderately well). {Note: yes, I'm about as nerdy as one can get in the direction of history / contemporary affairs / theology and such.} Anyway, I was quite exhasted by the end, what with Ireland right behind me, jetlag still hanging on. Then I immediately launched into finals, as my school operates on a trimester system which was interupted by the Hurricane.

So as you can see I have been occupied in Important Things- those mentioned above and others. I have been quite busy- which means that my attention to prayer is seriously foreshortened. Not only that, but it leads to a general weariness that gathers upon me and threatens to break down at some inopportune time. I go and go and neglect prayer and sleep and the action of simple inaction for a while. Or I end up so tired that I simply 'crash' and sleep intolerably long one day, trying to make up for what I missed. This really isn't very effective; likewise, it isn't terribly effective to try to pray for a long long time after missing it for several days. Prayer- from little I have learned about it- require continual practice, for our minds have a nasty propensity to wander, particularly it seems while in prayer. The same with Holy Scripture- it must be visited repeatedly and thus ingrained in the heart and in the conciousness.

It is along these lines of considering time, sleep, and prayer that I would like to offer the following passage from the Life of St. Leoba, a wonderful Anglo-Saxon abbess who journeyed to what was then either newly converted or still pagan Continent (her feast-day is September 28, which happily is also my birthday). She exemplified many virtues, including one we don't often necessarily associate with saints, reasonable moderation in sleep. However, her rubrics on rest are excellent. So is her example of devotion to Scripture and divine learning:

"So great was her zeal for reading that she discontinued it only for prayer or for the refreshment of her body with food or sleep: the Scriptures were never out of her hands. For, since she had been trained from infancy in the rudiments of grammar and the study of the other liberal arts, she tried by constant reflection to attain a perfect knowledge of divine things so that through the combination of her reading with her quick intelligence, by natural gifts and hard work, she became extremely learned. She read with attention all the books of the Old and New Testaments and learned by heart all the commandments of God. To these she added by way of completion the writings of the church Fathers, the decrees of the Councils and the whole of ecclesiastical law.

"She observed great moderation in all her acts and arrangements and always kept the practical end in view, so that she would never have to repent of her actions through having been guided by impulse. She was deeply aware of the necessity for concentration of mind in prayer and study, and for this reason took care not to go to excess either in watching or in other spiritual exercises. Throughout the summer both she and all the sisters under her rule went to rest after the midday meal, and she would never give permission to any of them to stay up late, for she said that lack of sleep dulled the mind, especially for study. "

I must note in passing that the afternoon nap or siesta is really a nice thing- this summer in China I tended to take one most days, when I could. I had reservations at first, but eventually subcombed. Here we are much too busy for such foolishness- we must stay up into the late hours as well, to get all those Important Things done. And not only am I too busy to sleep at reasonable times at night- much less in the afternoon (how wasteful!)- but I find myself as neglectful of Holy Scripture as St. Leoba was mindful. I really have no excuse. To be sure, I am not a monastic, but I have the time, and can make the time if I really desire, to devote myself much more to Scripture and to prayer. My problem is that while my mind can hold the idea that it is important, it does not translate to inner conviction and drive, at least not enough to make me get up and actually do it.

So then, it is my desire to try, in some small way, to pick up St. Leoba's example- along with so many other saints of ages past- and be more mindful of rest, such a seemingly simple thing, and be far more mindful of Scripture and prayer. Important Things are important, in moderation, but they are not- and never can be- the One Thing Needful.

Giant's Causeway

2005-11-16T15:28:00.000-06:00

The Giant's Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, is one of those places that you hear about and is hyped up- "wonder of the world" and all that. In many cases I have found these sorts of places disappointing; this one however did not disappoint. The weather may have had something to do with it: nasty, wet, and cold, which meant wild and magnificent seas and very few people scrambling about on the rocks, despite the presence of a paved road and shuttle bus providing access to the place (I walked of course).

The way down the coastline to the Causeway.

Looking across a little inlet at the main section of the Causeway.

A close-up of the odd basalt formations.

It was a little windy: good Irish horizontal rain; one could lean over the edge of the rocks and the wind hold him up. I couldn't feel my fingers, also. Very invigorating!

The coastal cliffs seen from the path that climbs up from the Causeway. The yellow stuff in the foreground is gorse, or furze, which blooms more or less year round.

High Crosses

2005-11-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

Ireland is full of medieval ecclessiastical goodness, lots of ancient church and monstery sites, but one of the most spectacular examples is the high cross. These stone high crosses, set up primarily in the ninth and tenth centuries, are scattered all over Ireland, primarily at monastic sites. We visited a couple of locations with high crosses, namely, at Drumcliffe and at Monasterboice.

This is the eleventh century high cross at Drumcliffe in County Sligo. It stands on the site of sixth century monastic settlement, of which nothing remains but the ruins of round tower. Drumcliffe is also the final resting place of W. B. Yeats.

A close-up of some of the so-called Celtic knot design on one of the sides of the cross.

One of the three magnificent tenth century high crosses at Monasterboice in County Louth, not far from Dublin. These are said to be among the finest examples of high crosses, and I will certainly concur to their beauty and magnificence. Monasterboice, as one may deduce from the name, was once a monastic site, and boasts, in addition to the crosses, a fine round tower, albiet missing its cap. The site, which also has the ruins of churches that were built after the monastery went defunct, is in the midst of gentle rolling countryside, not far from Newgrange, the Hill of Slane, the Hill of Tara, and other famous sites.

Another of the high crosses, with the round tower in the background. These towers functioned primarily as bell-towers; in addition they probably function as repositories for valuables, and possibly for defense, though this is disputed.

The simplest of the high crosses at Monasterboice.

Dispatch From Dublin

2005-11-05T18:07:00.000-06:00

Well, our little tramp through Ireland is winding to a close. Tonight I am in Dublin, the capital, at last connected to a free wireless network. For the time being I will forego extensive commentary and simply post a few pictures from the various points I have been. But first a few general words about my first impressions of Ireland.

Having had my first over-seas experience in rural Asia, the prices and extent of development was a bit of culture shock, in an odd way. The Euro is doing quite well and things are expensive anyway in much of Ireland, particularly the remoter parts with all the pretty mountains and rugged coasts. The food is decent; it's certainly not Asia, and its expensive and one is hardly ever filled up. McDonald's commercials have a sort of Surgeon General's warning on them. There is no smoking in pubs; the pubs are still lovely places, at least in the small towns. I just don't go in for what I've seen in Belfast and Dublin. My favorite was a place owned by one of the Chieftans, in the western town of Westport.

The scenery is breathtaking. I can't get over how green it is- spring green, like my home state in March and April. Wildflowers are still in bloom, especially along the coast. There is a smattering of fall colors, but many of the trees are still green, much like home (at least during normal years without catastrophic storms).

I love the old churches and monasteries and castles and such that dot the countryside and towns everywhere one goes. It's marvelous.

So then, on to some photos:

One of the lakes of Killarney. They were quite full, along with all the rivers in the area. I walked down towards the shore the next day, but couldn't get even within sight of it, the water being way up into the woods around. It has rained quite a bit lately. Lovely.
The Giant's Causeway. Magnificent place, and the weather was lovely, lovely: stiff wind off the ocean, about fifty degrees, with occasional horizontal rain. I couldn't feel my nose or my fingers, but I didn't care a bit.
The famed Ben Bulben from the churchyard in which William Butler Yeats is buried.
Some rocks and outrcropping on the shore of Galway Bay.
This scene is from the Burren, which is an odd place that reminds me more of the American West than Ireland. Most of it is covered in barren-looking limestone pavement, with ancient monuments scattered over it very copiously.
Along the coast on the Ring of Kerry.
Parkavonear Castle in the little village of Aghadoe in Kerry.
Me with the Torrs Waterfall in Killarney National Park in the background. The heavy rain made for a good show.

Killarney

2005-10-30T15:20:00.000-06:00

Well, we arrived in the Emerald Isle without trevail, and are now in the lovely town of Killareny which lies at the edge of the Ring of Kerry. Our hotel abuts the National Park, which is very nice as it means ready access to the trails that run alongside and above the lake- beyond which are some of Ireland's highest mountains.

The Ring of Kerry was spectacular. Words and pictures do not do it justice at all. The weather has alternated between horizontal driving rain to sunny and calm; the wind is usually blowing and one can usually see rain somewhere off in the distance. The rivers and lakes are in flood stage, and I have found that in Ireland mud exists everywhere, including near vertical slopes. My pants and boots have aquired quite a bit of it.

The food is alright; it's not Asia. The tea is good. It's all insanely expensive. If I ever come back to Europe I'm bringing a sleeping bag and a box of ramen noodles and a backpacking stove.

There are monastic sites, castle ruins, and churches everywhere. It's wonderful. I'm always the last to leave such things, somewhat to the consternation of my friends...

But I'm paying for my internet and nothing is cheap here, so I will end this dispatch. I hope to encounter a wireless hotspot eventually. Slainte!

Bound For The Isle of Saints

2005-10-26T17:06:00.000-05:00

Tommorow morning at six-thirty I am scheduled to trundle off for the recently re-opened New Orleans International Airport, from whence I will embark with several companions for a forray to Ireland. We are traveling with one of our professors, and will be spending a little under two weeks in Ireland, traveling in a horseshoe from Kerry in the Southwest up to Belfast and then down to Dublin, from whence we shall return to America.

Hopefully, thanks to an abundance of Internet connections, I will be able to post commentary and possibly pictures while en route; if not, then certainly upon my return.

May God be with thee in every pass,
Jesus be with thee on every knoll,
Spirit be with thee by water's roll,
On headland, on ridge, and on grass;

Each sea and land, each moor and each mead,
Each eve's lying-down, each rising's morn,
In the wave-trough, or on foam-crest borne,
Each step which thy journey doth lead.

Are There Any Other Arms

2005-10-26T16:57:00.000-05:00

"Indeed, apart from Scripture's utterances, are there any other arms with which we who oppose the devil may defend the liberty given us by God? For there we learn from the examples of the Lord himself and his saints- more clearly than from a light- by what tacticts the wars against vices are to be won. But the Philistines deprive Israel's sons of their armsmakers when evil spirits hinder the minds of the faithful from meditation on sacred reading by so preoccupying them with wordly affairs that the faithful may neither gain the confidence to resist the vices, which comes by training in this meditation, nor arouse by exhortation and reproof those others to do so who cannot read. They carry off armsmakers when evil spirits mire Holy Scripture's students so deeply in sins that they grow utterly ashamed to declare the good things that they have learned."

St. Bede, Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings, Q. 30

The Forgotten (In the West) Killer

2005-10-24T20:32:00.000-05:00

From World Magazine: Kill or Be Killed:

In Africa, mosquitoes go blood hunting after dusk. They often drift in through open windows or doors, but any crack or crevice will do. Inside, they sniff out their prey: a mother scrubbing pots after dinner, a child's ankles as she finishes her homework.

Bedtime is the best time for feeding. Through the quiet darkness comes a mosquito's reedy whine when it zips past your ear. But in Africa mosquitoes mean more than itchy bites; just one can bring death through malaria. And trillions breed anywhere there is fresh standing water, even puddles.

::

From the Washington Post: Look Who's Ignoring Science Now:

The Ugandans know perfectly well that DDT can help them: As Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute recently testified to Congress, DDT spraying in one part of the country in 1959 and 1960 reduced the prevalence of malaria from 22 percent to less than 1 percent. Ugandans also know the record in South Africa, where the cessation of DDT spraying in 1996 allowed the number of malaria cases to multiply tenfold and where the resumption of spraying in 2000 helped to bring the caseload down by almost 80 percent.

So the Ugandans, not unreasonably, would like to use DDT. But in February the European Union waved an anti-scientific flag at them. The Europeans said Uganda might need to institute a new food monitoring program to assuage the health concerns of their consumers, even though hundreds of millions have been exposed to DDT without generating any solid evidence that the chemical harms people. The E.U. proposal might constitute an impossible administrative burden on a poor country. Anti-malaria campaigners say that other African governments are wary of even considering DDT, having seen what Uganda has gone through.

This Was Taken From Us, But Jesus Renewed It

2005-10-17T17:02:00.000-05:00

“The humble man approaches ravening beasts, and when their gaze rests upon him, their wildness is tamed. They come up to him as to their Master, wag their heads and tails and lick his hands and feet, for they smell coming from him that same scent that exhaled from Adam before the fall, when they were gathered together before him and he gave them names in Paradise. This was taken away from us, but Jesus has renewed it, and given it back to us through His Coming. This it is which has sweetened the fragrance of the race of men.”

St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 77, Ascetical Homilies

“For it is no wonder that every creature should obey his wishes, who so faithfully, and with his whole heart, obeyed the great Author of all creatures. But we for the most part have lost our dominion over the creation that has been subjected to us, because we neglect to obey the Lord and Creator of all things.”

St. Bede, Life of St. Cuthbert

In the lives of the saints a recurring motif is that of the saint’s close association with and understanding of nature. It is a thread that runs through numerous hagiographies, in many forms, and goes back arguably into the biblical narrative. These stories are usually dismissed by moderns as superstitious, and rather pointless- what service to humanity or one’s spirituality is done by receiving obeisance from crows or tending to an injured lion? And at first reading it is hard not find them not only difficult to believe, but quite, for lack of a better word, childish. Yet one may find in these often charming and almost magical stories deep theological implications; they reveal first the brokenness of the world and man’s place in it, and the possibility of redemption, redemption not limited to man, but extending through him to the whole created order.

While one may find examples in many saints’ lives, for our purposes let us restrict ourselves to Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert. St. Cuthbert flourished in Northumbria during the seventh century, as bishop and monastic. Bede records a number of miracles that the saintly bishop performs, and many of them involve nature, especially animals.

First, we should consider what is meant by miracle. Miracles are regarded with either outright rejection or extreme suspicion by most today, and their presence in medieval accounts is always a difficult point of contact for modern minds. Yet for the medieval person, miracles represented much more than remarkable manifestations of God’s power simply for the sake of being seen. Miracles are, as the Greek word indicates, ‘sign events,’ manifestations of God’s power that have a specific meaning. They have the same function in saints’ lives, though their exact meaning is not always immediately evident. They demonstrate something about the order of the world and God's operation in it. Ultimately all miracles are calls to repentance. They manifest God to the world, while also showing the brokenness of the world. We may see this in the Gospel accounts: Christ heals the sick, drives out demons, calms the angry sea, feeds the hungry- all acts of bringing healing, of binding up what is broken in the world, of righting a wrong. Each one serves as a sign of what Christ was- is- doing in the world as a whole. They are, as C. S. Lewis once noted, localized miracles flowing from and pointing to the one great miracle: Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension; the true repairing of the world.

In the lives of the saints we see the same principle. Miracles are enacted words revealing the power of God through its very operation. What then of the miraculous animal stories? St. Bede leads us to it in the passage quoted above. If we were to confront Bede with the implausibility of these stories, he would probably agree: but he would stipulate that the reason they sound implausible is because we are fallen from the original dominion we had while in communion with God. Nature is severed from us and we are at enmity with it. Adam’s fall caused not only an ontological separation between himself and God, but between himself and other people, and between himself and the whole of creation. In the saints this ontological divide is reversed; their close communion with God removes the animosity and ontological separation intrinsic to fallen man.

In The Life of St. Cuthbert, the first miraculous event with animals is one in which St. Cuthbert had been praying in the sea off of Lindisfarne all night, one of the monks secretly watching him. After some time he comes up on to the shore and began praying. The narrative continues, saying, “Whilst he was doing this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair after which, having received his blessing, they returned to their native element.” Two things about the saint are revealed here: first, the manner in which animals willingly approach him and do him service. This is a direct reversal of the postdiluvial passage in which God says to- fallen- man, “The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.” (Genesis 9:2) This dread clearly stems from man’s fall; earlier in Genesis we are told how God brought each animal to Adam for Adam to name. With the fall the created order no longer has the same connection with man, for man forfeits his closeness to God, from which the connection with the natural order stems. But in the saint this ontological fall is shown to be overcome able, through union with Christ in prayer and humility- the last aspect in particular being greatly emphasized by St. Cuthbert.

We are also told that St. Cuthbert blessed the otters, showing that the saint does not see creation as mere means of utility, but invests in it love and care. His love for creation flows from his possessing dominion from God, Who is love and care towards all His creatures: “Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O Lord” (Psalm 36:6). Man’s dominion must be dominion in imitation of the humble Lordship of God, Who deigned to die for His creation, man, upon the Cross.

Later in the account, Bede relates a story in which St. Cuthbert and a young man, Cuthbert’s attendant, were on a journey preaching the Gospel in remote villages of Northumbria. Because of the remoteness of the region, the young man began to worry whether they would have anything to eat that evening. Cuthbert admonished him not to worry; if God so willed he could send an eagle to bring them food. A little further along they came to a river, and on its bank was an eagle with a large fish. The young man went and took it from the eagle, but was reproved by St. Cuthbert: “What have you done, my son? Why have you not given part to God's handmaid? Cut the fish in two pieces, and give her one, as her service well deserves.” They then took their half of the fish and walked to the next village, where they cooked and shared their bounty, making “an excellent repast, and gave also to their entertainers, whilst Cuthbert preached to them the word of God, and blessed Him for his mercies.”

This story is meant to especialy emphasize God’s providence in supplying His servants, and demonstrates the proper response of His servants to His gift of creation. Cuthbert saw the eagle as the “handmaiden” of the Lord and of His servants, and therefore deserving of her fair share. The food they received in thanks and shared with the villagers, along with the word of God, receiving and further giving creation eucharistically, in imitation of Christ, both in His becoming man and entering into creation as the Second Adam, and in His instituting the Eucharist.

In the remaining stories of St. Cuthbert’s interaction with nature we see the same principles. Cuthbert is able to exercise a grace-given dominion over creation because he has returned to God. He is restored to holiness, which enables him to approach the natural world in imitation of God. This holiness, the sanctity of the saint, is seen to be something that is perceptible even to animals, for it is an ontological feature of the saint, he having been brought back to communion with God, and thus to communion with the natural order as well. Upon receiving back the natural world he re-offers it to God in blessing and thanksgiving, as Christ did throughout His ministry on earth, fulfilling the role Adam failed to fulfill. Cuthbert, in union with Christ, is re-made a priest after the example of Christ, and relates the world back to God, whether in the act of preaching the Gospel or proffering a blessing upon a pair of otters on the ocean-side. Having been brought back to harmony with God in Christ, man may now be brought back into loving harmony with himself, with his fellow man, and with the entire creation, instead of the enmity and separation of sin.

Thus the stories of the saints and animals are ultimately stories of Christ re-making man. In Christ we can come back into the divine harmony, through union with Him, back into his God-given dominion in humility, back to closeness to the natural world. To quote St. Isaac the Syrian from above, “This was taken away from us, but Jesus has renewed it, and given it back to us through His Coming. This it is which has sweetened the fragrance of the race of men.”

Inconvenience and Adventure

2005-10-15T23:05:00.000-05:00

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

G.K. Chesterton, On Running After Ones Hat

St. Kenneth of Kilkenny

2005-10-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

From the Celt-Saints E-Group:

Born at Glengiven (Derry), Ireland, c. 515-527; died at Aghaboe ("the ox's field") in Laois, c. 599. According to the tradition Saint Kenneth was the son of a scholar-poet, who became a pupil of Saint Finnian (f.d.December 12) at Clonard. He may have gone with Saints Kieran (f.d.September 9), Columba (f.d. June 9), Comgall (f.d. May 11) on mission to Saint Mobhi (f.d. October 12) at Glasnevin, preached for a time in Ireland. When plague scattered the community, Canice became a monk under Saint Cadoc (f.d. September 25) at Llancarfan, Wales, where he was ordained.

Canice was a close friend of Saint Columba whom he accompanied on a visit to King Brude of the Picts at Inverness, because he was of the Pictish race and spoke the language. Thus, he assisted Columba in establishing his base at Iona, where there was once a Killchainnech. He served similarly in introducing Comgall at Lismore. For a time Canice worked in the Western Isles and on the mainland of Scotland, where he is known as Kenneth. A number of place names and old dedications confirm his presence in Scotland, notably the islet called Inch Kenneth in Mull. He founded churches on Tiree, South Uist, Coll, and Kintyre. He was the first person to build a church at Saint Andrews, then known as Rigmond. As Aengus records, "Aghaboe was his principal church and he has a Recles (monastery) at Kill-Rigmonaig in Alba." The Irish abbot of Rigmond, Riaghail or Regulus, whom some believe to have been a 4th-century Greek monk named Rule, carried the relics of the apostle Saint Andrew (f.d. November 30) to Rigmond. But the relics were not acquired until 736, at which time the name was changed to Saint Andrews.

When he returned to Ireland he founded the monastery of Aghaboe in Ossory, c. 577. Other foundations included Drumahose in Derry and Cluain Bronig in Offaly. Saint Canice is said also to have had a foundation at Kilkenny. That city is named after Canice, who was the titular patron of the Brethren of Saint Kenneth.

Canice copied a manuscript of the four Gospels. He was known as an effective preachers, when, according to the saint, he was divinely illuminated by God.

Canice is one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland and patron of Kennoway in Fife.

Like other Irish monastics saints, Canice periodically lived as a hermit and enjoyed the close communion such a life afforded with nature.

"Another time when Saint Cainnic was in hidden retreat in solitude, a stag came to him, and would hold the book steady on his antlers as the Saint read on. But one day, startled by a sudden fear, he dashed into flight without the abbot's leave, carrying the book still open on his antlers; but thereafter, like a fugitive monk to his abbot, the book safe and unharmed still open on his antlers, he returned" (Plummer).

Lord Have Mercy

2005-10-10T00:06:00.000-05:00

"For minutes I thought I had died," he said, describing how he passed out. "But after gaining consciousness, I looked around and saw a friend of mine lying near me."

Qureshi's hands suffered deep cuts when hit by falling debris, but he climbed through a hole in the wall to safety, dragging his friend behind him. He said he believed the other students in his class were critically injured or killed.

The teenager's ordeal was not over. He rushed home but found only a pile of rubble. His parents and grandmother were dead.

A day after the disaster, he sat on the rubble of his school building, still in his school uniform because all his possessions were gone.

"There is nobody who can help me save my classmates," he said. "Is there anybody who can help me?"

Meditation on the Prodigal Son

2005-10-09T22:02:00.000-05:00

“Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.”

St. Luke 15:13-16

The Prodigal Son has taken his share of the inheritance from his Father, and is now journeying away from his Father’s House into the “far country.” First it would be noted that upon leaving the Father’s House the inheritance, glorious as it must be, is of no good use to the son once he has departed. Taken from the presence of the Father the inheritance cannot really help him. So it is with us: we may have many gifts and graces bestowed on us by God, whether they be ‘natural’ graces of intellect or ability, or even those gifts of grace that God bestows upon His children as especial and unique favours. But remove them from their end and goal in God, take them out of His House, His divine community, and they cease to be of any real use. So it is with anything one possesses in this world. And so we see the young man taking what he has into the far country.

The far country: it is a place alien to the Father’s House, by its very designation. It is in fact foreign to the young man himself; he does not belong there. Yet he finds that with his possessions, which he now uses for himself, he can support himself for a time. He is “reckless” in his living, it says, for in carrying his inheritance to the far country he ceases to use it within reason. Sin is the corruption of a good; it is a determinedly irrational action, for it violates the order that God has made the universe in. It contradicts God Himself, Who is the very Logos, the Maker of the universe. Thus the young man squanders his property for he turns it to the wrong uses. He tries to make himself a citizen of this city, and fulfill himself in it. But he cannot.

Instead, he “spends everything.” All his resources are wasted; and since he is away from Home, he cannot replenish them. They cease because he has left his Father. Now he finds himself “in need.” He experiences an existential crisis, so to speak, which only increases until he reaches his great epiphany; for he is caught in a “severe famine.” This famine is the ultimate emptiness of that “far country,” alienated from God, alienated from the good, alienated from any sense of true fulfillment. It is a hungry land, for it has rejected God. Why is the famine said to suddenly strike? Was it not always there? It was, in a sense, but the young man and his companions were able to stave it off through their limited resources. Man entertains himself and distracts himself, desperately (though he hardly knows or acknowledges it) seeking to escape the famine. He ignores it through means of money, sex, power, food, drink, entertainment, whatever can fill his mind. He surrounds himself with pleasures and noises, not so much because he truly enjoys them, but because without them he would succumb immediately to the famine.

So the young man is caught in the midst of the famine. He has expended all that he took from his Father’s House; he must place himself at the mercy of the citizens of the far country. However, he finds in them none of the love and abundance of his Father’s House. Instead, he is sent to feed pigs. He remains hungry, for the people of that place “gave him nothing.” Why? For two reasons: first, they truly have nothing to give. They also are empty people, even if they possess the goods of the world. Second, it is not in their manner to give: the young man’s money has disappeared, and so has his importance and worth in the world. For the system of the far country sees humans in terms of “use” and varying degrees of importance. It is a system which allows for the murder of the unborn, for the ignoring of the elderly, for apathy towards the oppressed. It is concerned only with self. The young man is now at the low point of his existential despair, down in the bottom of the pig-pen, but the citizens of the world will not, cannot offer him anything.

But it is at this point, where he is gripped by the depths of the famine’s hunger, that he is finally able to “come to himself.” There are no more distractions; the only noise he can hear is the slopping of pigs, and it is through this undignified silence that he finally hears the voice of reason beating in himself. He cannot escape the despair of his situation; the nagging dissatisfaction he had always had could not be sated with wine, women, or song: the whole artifice he had bought into, wasted his Father’s property in, is now exposed in its emptiness. He is hungry, and there is nothing else to fill him.

“But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."'And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate.”

St. Luke 15:17-24

We all know the conclusion of the young man’s story. The young man does at last come to his sense; he rises up from the pig-sty and journeys back to his Father. The emptiness of the world into which he wandered, seeking fulfillment, has at last been laid fully bare before him. He realizes his great need and finally gives in to it. He returns to God, and is met with open arms. Where the citizens of the world had met him with further emptiness the Father meets him with all his riches and honor; where the citizens of the world had drawn away from him when the famine came, the Father welcomes him with the fullness of love. The citizens of the far country are distant, offering nothing; the Father feels compassion and kisses his son, immediately removing the alienation and separation. The story does not end at the existential dead-end; it unfolds instead into a “eucatastrophe” in which the young man does not remain in the deadness, the emptiness of the far country, but is brought back to life- he was “dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” There is a happy reversal- he is resurrected from the death of sin into the life of the Father’s House. The love and fullness of God triumphs.

Che Guevera

2005-10-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

Ten Shots at Che Guevera. Why Communist chic is accepted in certain elements of our society is beyond me- no, actually, it's not, because certain elements of our society choose to ignore all the attrocities commited in the name of Communism. They comfortably ignore the attrocities of Communist regimes, both those past and the ongoing ones, and yet expect to maintain some sort of moral imperative when attacking US foreign policies. Grrr...

O Wonder of Wonders!

2005-09-30T09:44:00.000-05:00

"O wonder of wonders, that Christ's spirit is united to our spirit, his will is one with ours, his flesh becomes our flesh, his blood flows in our veins. What spirit is ours when it is possessed by his, our will when led captive by his, our clay when set on fire by his flame!"

St. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ

One Score of Years and Counting

2005-09-29T19:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my twentieth birthday. Twenty years ago Mississippi was hot and sweaty; today it's still pretty hot and sweaty. A hurricane was bearing down on the US coast, and hurricanes have come and gone a few more times. Some we remember more than others. Reagan was President; more Presidents have been made and unmade. Wars have been fought and won and lost and left to simmer. Wars and rumours of wars and echoes of the end. Empires have crashed and risen; nations come and gone. The Wall came down; others still remain. Things have been shaken we never thought could be.

Some things I remember from the years in between:

Watching the tanks roll across the sand. Watching them again.

Sledding on cardboard in two-inch deep Alabama snow.

The Gulf angry and grey in the wintertime.

Watching the sun rise over the Appalachians and the mountains burst into golden fire.

Watching the clouds drift in the Chinese mountains and the sun break out and illumine the rice terraces falling down the valley.

Realizing just how wonderful bluegrass sounded.

That first campfire and sandy campsite with my father by the Sipsey Fork.

Discovering Dostoevsky.

Seeing those towers fall and feeling it was all a dream we would wake up from soon.

Realizing how bad people can be- people you know and trusted- and wishing it were all a dream and we would wake up soon.

Listening to the trees shattering and falling in the wind.

My first airplane ride and thinking how beautiful the quilted plains looked from up so high.

Playing bingo with my great-grandmother in her little house at night and traveling into the past with her.

The impeachment trials.

Eating breakfast in a monastery.

The time my father got his shoulders stuck in a narrow little cave passage and I was behind him and he was really badly stuck. (He shoved and pushed until he eventually got free.)

Baptisms in the Sipsey River (a different one) among the tea-orangebrown water and the cypress knees.

Burrowing in the hay piles in the barn with my brother and my grandfather in his red and black plaid watching from the four-wheeler.

Showering under waterfalls.

Walking out of the airport in Kunming.

The sun setting through the pine trees and the wind blowing and it smelling so good it was like some kind of rapture.

I have had a remarkably good life so far. I have seen more and experienced more than I ever dreamed I would when I was young and dreamt my way into far-off places. I have been blessed by God more than I ever could deserve. I hope I can become more grateful. I pray I will not waste whatever further years are given me.

A Great Many Diverse Things

2005-09-28T00:37:00.000-05:00

"If you want to become judicious and moderate and no servant of the passion of conceit, always seek in things what is hidden from your knowledge. You will find a great many diverse things which have eluded you, and you will be astonished at your own ignorance and temper your pride. And in knowing yourself you will understand many great and wonderful things, since to think that one knows does not allow one to advance in knowledge."

St. Maximus the Confessor, Four Hundred Chapters on Love, 3.81

Christian Indie Folk Rock Stuff

2005-09-22T21:21:00.000-05:00

My evening's happy discovery: sweet Christian indie music (I'm not kidding): Sounds Familyre. Particularly of note is this guy Sufjan Stevens. Hat tip to A Minor.

Springtime in September

2005-09-21T17:40:00.000-05:00

Classes resumed Monday and things are returning to normal here. Traffic is the greatest headache common to all now, as there are still many utility and military vehicles around, along with the many people who have removed- perhaps permanently- from the Coast and New Orleans. I am glad to be back in class; our schedule has been modified, of course, but it's quite tolerable. Carey operates on a trimester system, with week long breaks between trimesters, which we will lose this year, leaving Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring breaks intact.

The damage and destruction from the storm is still sharply evident; I suppose much of it will remain for years to come. One thing that has taken by surprise is the response of the natural world to the storm. The heavy winds managed to strip many decidious trees of their leaves, so much that after the storm much of South Mississippi looked like it normally does in the winter (most of our oaks tend to retain their leaves, albiet in a brown whithered form, all through the winter; and quite a few of them held on through the hurricane). But now, nearly a month afterwards, the trees are glowing with fresh new growth. If you were to drive across South Mississippi you would think it was springtime, with so many of the forests aburst with that particular bright fresh green of March and Paril (down here anyway!). The bradford pears, most of which were beaten up pretty badly, are making a second run of blooms. The miles and miles of splintered trees are now softened by a hurricane-wrought second springtime. Beauty from ashes, I suppose.

A Week Later

2005-09-05T13:14:00.000-05:00

Our family came back to Jones County yesterday. There is now some power; I'm at my dad's office in town at the moment. Our house is still without power or phone service. It will probably be another week or so before we are back online.

Ellisville has cleaned up some; there are still trees everywhere, just not in the roads anymore. Some powerlines have been put back up; most are still down. The gas stations- when they have gas- have long lines snaking out behind them. My brother and a neighbor went into town to fuel up today; they waited about an hour. Ellisville smells really, really bad: there is garbage piling up in a makeshift dump, garbage in front of people's houses, along with spoiled food from refrigerators which was dumped outside. I can't imagine what the Coast or New Orleans smells like...

Jones County suffered pretty extensive damage; most of the houses and businesses are damaged in some way or another. At least twelve people died in the storm in our county.

The refugee problem is growing more evident all across the state. The county my grandparents live in, Winston, is taking in several hundred, which is going to be quite a task for a rural Mississippi county. This is not a rich state. Most of the economic development in Mississippi is- or was- centered on the southern tier, where the damage is greatest.

Of course, everyone is talking about the relief response and all that; but I am no position to pontificate on it, not having had very good access to information- and the fact that it still a developing story. I do know that what I have seen is not very encouraging, particularly with the gas situation. We are terribly dependent on gasoline; gasoline distribution in the event of a distaster is evidently not very dependable. There are some troubling implications there.

Aftermath

2005-08-31T22:13:00.000-05:00

I survived. We were pounded all day Monday, with the most intense winds- up to a 110 miles an hour- between 12:00 and 3:00 or so (this a hundred odd miles from the coast). It was awful- I have never been through a genuine hurricane before, so I have nothing to gauge it against, but let me tell you it was no fun. There were trees splintering and crashing all around our house. There was of course no power or telephones; no cell phone service, and our battery powered radio was little good because no local station was on the air. We have been getting news in tiny snippets; word of mouth, the occasional radio bulletin that concerns our area. Not having even basic communication technology is maddening. Being stuck in a hot, humid house with four other people in the midst of a raging storm is no fun. Talk about stress... The next day we got up and saw the damage. Our yard was- is- like a war zone, tree trunks splintered ten feet up, the grass invisible beneath a carpet of pine limbs. Our power line is curled up in the ditch, snapped. The road in front of our house was clogged with tree after tree after tree. Our neighbor down the road had every last one of his ten or twenty fifty-plus year old pines leveled.

One of the nice things about Mississippi, however, is that there are lots of guys with pick-up trucks, ATV's, and chainsaws, so our roads were cleared by Tuesday evening. We drove into Ellisville, our little town, after driving under dangling power masts and lines, and around great old oak trees and pecans. It was awful. I nearly cried. Century-old trees toppled, houses with holes in them, roofs crumpled like tin foil. People just walking around or sitting on their porches looking out into space. It's hot. If you've never lived down here you don't know what it's like. You lose the AC and life quickly gets miserable. You think you're under stress; try it when it's a hundred degrees outside. Our house lacked water for part of Tuesday; some parts of the county still don't have water. But we're fortunate; at least seven people died in our county, where there were no evacuation orders or anything. Seven more died in Forrest County just south of us; I'm afraid more people will die due to heat and contaminated water. A lot of people just have nowhere to go; in Mississippi so many of us have all of our kinfolk right around us. There are a lot of people whose family lived on the Coast or in New Orleans; they certainly aren't going back there.

Tonight I'm at a relative's house in Winston County, MS, a hundred or so miles north of Jones County, where they now have power again. We're going to stay here for a few days, then go back and clean up and wait I guess. I have no idea when I'll be able to go back to school; Hattiesburg was hammered even worse than Jones County from what I've been able to gather. We have no idea when we might get electricity again. Meanwhile I'm still in a sort of state of shock. I feel like I have jet-lag or something, only more intense. I feel selfish- the coast and NO are far worse; I can't imagine now what it must have been like- still is like- for people in Southeast Asia. I was reading St. Bernard of Clairvaux before the hurricane hit, in which he talks about us only knowing what the sick or hungry feel when we have been there; only then can we truly love them and 'share in their sufferings'. I think I have a faint glimmer of what he was talking about. I would like to say I've had further epiphanies and bursts of compassion, but I haven't. I've felt miserable; angry, tired, so on. I feel terrible- selfish, nasty, tired, incapable of doing anything. I'm tired of rammen noodles (I had spaghetti tonight at my grandmother's; it was great); my parents' and brotherd' nerves are as shot as mine, and it shows! But we'll survive; we're alive and our house is undamaged. Our kinfolk are all safe and accounted for; so many people still don't know what has happened to their family members. We have a place to go back to. There are so many in my state that don't. There are people in my county who don't. South Mississippi is an open wound tonight. Please pray for us.

Hurricane Warning

2005-08-28T13:46:00.000-05:00

Well, we're bracing for a little excitment in the next few days. We had been expecting some rain, maybe some wind, off of the hurricane; we were not expecting what is now transpiring. A little after I got up this morning one of our dorm RAs came by and informed me of the situation, and that classes were canceled until further notice- who knows when that will be. So I packed up and headed home for Jones County, instead of staying in Hattiesburg as I had planned to, and went to morning services in my parents' church, and came out to the house. We've been busy moving stuff off of the porch and getting supplies, water, and gas ready. We're more than a little nervous; the way the weather people are talking this is going to be big. At this moment the sky is bright and blue outside; it's insanely hot and humid. It'll be a different picture in a few more hours...

Culture of Death

2005-08-27T21:13:00.000-05:00

The editor of a medical journal that published an article this week saying fetuses likely don't feel pain until late in pregnancy said Thursday she has received dozens of angry e-mails from abortion opponents.

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief of The Journal of the American Medical Association, said she had to take a walk around the block after receiving dozens of "horrible, vindictive" messages.

"One woman said she would pray for my soul," DeAngelis said. "I could use all the prayers I can get." DeAngelis said she is a staunch Roman Catholic and strongly opposes abortion, though she also supports women's right to choose.

"Your licence should be stripped," DeAngelis said, reading aloud from the 50 or so e-mails that came to her office. "You're hypocrisy," "You should get a real job," "Eternity will definitely bring justice for you," others wrote.

:: Read the rest (if you just really want to) ::

Good grief. Where does one start? That "I'm praying for you" is now "hate mail"? That the worse she could must was "Eternity will definitely bring justice for you"? A staunch Roman Catholic who "personally" opposes abortion but doesn't really? Language is also a casualty in the culture of death.

The Seed of the Church

2005-08-24T17:01:00.000-05:00

Arrest First, Ask Questions Later: our friends in the CCP have been busy again banking on their guarantees of religious freedom and human rights. But don't worry, "Chinese lives are cheap"- leave the Americans alone and everyone's happy; torture Chinese believers to death and it will not provoke so much as a mention from the media. Chinese lives are not cheap, however, to Someone far greater than the American media or State Department, and He is neither deaf nor blind.

(The icon above- and in the corner of the blog header- is of a group of Chinese Orthodox martyrs from the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century. Through their prayers, with all the prayers of the martyrs down through the ages, may God have mercy upon us all.)

His Voice Is Love Itself

2005-08-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

"After the Bridegroom has gazed on the soul with kindness and mercy, hid voice softly whispers the divine will. His voice is love itself, and love never rests but is continually urging the heart to do God's bidding. The spouse also hears the call to rise up in haste and take up the work of saving souls. The nature of true, pure contemplation is such that, while kindling the heart with divine love, it sometimes fills it with great zeal to win other souls for God. The heart gladly gives up the quiet of contemplation for the work of preaching. Once its desires are fulfilled, the heart quickly returns to contemplation, as to the source of good works. In the same way, once it has tasted anew the delights of contemplation, it joyfully dedicates itself to new works. Nevertheless, the soul fear the changing affections and fluctuating movements between contemplation and action. It is likewise wary of becoming overly attached to anything, lest it turn away, even slightly, from the divine will."

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On The Song of Songs

The Dormition of the Theotokos

2005-08-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

Today the life-giving treasury and abyss of charity (I know not how to trust my lips to speak of it) is hidden in immortal death. She meets it without fear, who conceived death’s destroyer, if indeed we may call her holy and vivifying departure by the name of death. For how could she, who brought life to all, be under the dominion of death? But she obeys the law of her own Son, and inherits this chastisement as a daughter of the first Adam, since her Son, who is the life, did not refuse it. As the Mother of the living God, she goes through death to Him. For if God said: “Unless the first man put out his hand to take and taste of the tree of life, he shall live for ever,” how shall she, who received the Life Himself, without beginning or end, or finite vicissitudes, not live for ever.

St. John of Damascus

That Explains It

2005-08-15T12:51:00.000-05:00

Why I will never have a girlfriend, and a guide to Platonic friendship; very clever. Very true. Ahem.

The World's Tallest Man Is ... Chinese

2005-08-13T23:07:00.000-05:00

Well, to be more accurate, he is from Inner Mongolia, which is a part of the PRC. It would be particularly interesting- and difficult- to be the world's tallest man anywhere, but particularly in China. Heck, I'm tall in China. I was always either the shortest or second shortest kid in elementary school. In China I stood out. It was quite an ego boost.