Wednesday morning, April 30th, 2008, and an easy morning so far

I feel like I am taking this uncouth, wild (red in tooth and claw) boy and training him in the basic requirements of living in civilized society.

I am thinking of a eulogy for a tree. This nice poem by Freada Dillon came up on a goggle.

Eulogy http://www.burningword.com/node/694

The mulberry tree has grown crooked, seeking light
from under a canopy
of massive hardwoods and pine sentinels.
Branches,
covered with leaves the size of dinner plates,
sway precariously over the roof.
All attempts to redirect its growth have failed.
Replacements,
sprung from berries broadcast
along with bird droppings,
flourish in better light. But I will not
see them reach full growth.
The chainsaw's grind and sputter
punctuate the air. In moments
the yard is adrift in deadfall.
With the last bite, the chain binds,
jitters,
then releases.
The trunk falls almost gently,
settling into a bed of its own foliage.
Rising sap puddles on the raw stump,
warm to the touch,
bitter on my tongue.
2004

“Falling in faith and falling in love can be understood the same way. People fall in love with no evidence of how a relationship will work out and no real knowledge of who their partner is, let alone who they will be.... We never have any real information about anything important. It takes a lifetime for the ramifications to be worked out. ...

The irony is that we all—secular or religious people alike—make our biggest decisions on faith.... You would have to live a lifetime to be qualified... And since we can’t do that we trust to luck, religion, and the kindness of strangers.”

From Frank Schaeffer’s book Crazy for God.

another day

Monday, April 21st, 2008. The fifth week of Easter

Today is Monday beginning the third week of Caleb staying with me. I have my 14 year-old grandson staying with me for a while. And I have managed to make just about everyone mad at me. The Pope has been in the U.S. and I missed his visit entirely. Well, maybe not entirely, but I hardly knew it was happening. The last two weeks have been “weird” for sure. Oh well.

Monday was followed by Tuesday and everything changed. So today it is

Tuesday, April 29th, a week later and all is well.

I am thinking about this morning at the coffee shop. My dog Izzy has taken on iconic status at the local coffee shop. Doubtless she has stories told about her to friends and acquaintances. But I am not privy to those.

Here is the dialogue from today’s two-for-Tuesday mocha walk.

INT. COFFEE SHOP—SUNNY MORNING

Woman
I feel so sorry for that dog.

Man
Would it be better for her to sit at home for 2 hours or take a 3-mile walk?

Woman (with back turned, up-raised backhand gesture, derisive voice)
I wasn’t talking to you.

Fade...

That did poor Izzy a lot of good.

Doesn’t it seem more helpful—and potentially more beneficial to the animal you are sympathizing with—if you talk to the human owner instead of self-righteously, dismissively responding to an attempt to communicate? I don’t get it. Like I said, it did Izzy a lot of good.

Tuesday, April Fools, Second week of Eastertide, 2008. Actually, now it is Thursday the 3rd.

I don’t remember where I came across this prayer:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt:
Put me to doing: put me to suffering:
Let me be employed for thee, or laid aside for thee:
Exalted for thee, or brought low for thee:
Let me be full, let me be empty:
Let me have all things: let me have nothing:
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, [Mother/]Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth let it be ratified in heaven.

Again, my memory is fussy, but didn’t I read somewhere that Flannery O'Connor wrote this?

“Subtlety is the curse of man, it is not found in the Deity.”


I got this Franz Wright poem from Knopf’s daily April poem. “Sunlight will win, don’t worry.” That’s a quote, not the title.


Publication Date

One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one's book in the hands of a kindhearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can't remember what the others
are right now.
I just noticed that it is my own private


National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever). The forecast calls
for a cold night in Boston all morning


and all afternoon. They say
tomorrow will be just like today,
only different. I'm in the cemetery now
at the edge of town, how did I get here?


A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying
I am Federico García Lorca
risen from the dead—
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.

The following block is from a book review of Scott Weidensaul's Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding and Jonathan Rosen's The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature by Cindy Crosby in Books and Culture Review (: A Christian Review, that is). The writer internally quoted is Rosen.

Never have I better understood the meaning of Hegel's observation ["the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk"], which essentially means that insight arrives when the end is near, or that cultures peak when they are about to die, than when I started birding." Later, he [Rosen] writes poignantly, "If we don't shore up the earth, the skies will be empty." Birding has changed him for the better: "Dawn and dusk matter differently to me now, and the seasons, tied to the arrival of birds and the departure of birds, bind me to the earth in subtle and important ways."

"Dawn and dusk matter differently to me now, and the seasons, tied to the arrival of birds and the departure of birds, bind me to the earth in subtle and important ways."

I like that. It matters to me too.

Easter Triduum

Maundy Thursday, March 20th, 2008

Easter Triduum begins: the terrible and the joyful melds in perfect union. This Easter I will be able to attend worship through the entire season.

From Wikipedia:

The week before Easter is very special in the Christian tradition. The Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday and the last three days before Easter are Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday (sometimes referred to as Silent Saturday). Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively commemorate Jesus' entry in Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are sometimes referred to as the Easter Triduum (Latin for "Three Days").

And

In the Christian liturgical calendar, Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday is the feast or holy day falling on the Thursday before Easter that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. It is the fifth day of Holy Week, and is preceded by Holy Wednesday and followed by Good Friday.
On this day four events are commemorated: the washing of the Disciples' feet by Jesus Christ, the institution of the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper, the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Christ by Judas Iscariot.
The morning celebration of these events marks the beginning of what is called the Easter Triduum or Sacred Triduum. The Latin word triduum means a three-day period, and the triduum in question is that of the three days from the death to the resurrection of Jesus.

writer block

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

It is the curse of wanabe writers like me. But I am still happy to have finished phase I of my cleaning/organizing. Spring cleaning? Lent cleaning? While cleaning I was listening to John McCutcheon, Tom Waits, Bruce Cockburn, Jars of Clay, Sara Groves, and Chanticleer. Jars of Clay and Sara Groves are new to me.

World Youth Day 2008, Sidney, Australia, and John Henry Cardinal Newman from The Times.


KU-USF football game moved to Sept. 12 for ESPN: I love the Fall and college football season.

morning

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Lent is drawing to a close. Has it made a difference? Wednesday is my parish penitential service, confession is looming. Am I ready? 5 days till the Ides of March. How is this year going to go? Next Sunday is Palm Sunday. 10 days to Spring (I recently read that Lent comes from a Roman word meaning Spring), 11 days till Good Friday (J. S. Bach’s BD), 13 days until Easter. Enough of this.

Subtlety is the curse of man, it is not found in the Deity. I came across this quote by Flannery O’ Conner somewhere this past weekend. I like it.

Good news. Southern Baptists Back a Shift on Climate Change is the headline to this article in the New York Times.

Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? An important issue for Christians, and others, who care about justice to think about, and not because I think it slum tourism is wrong or evil.

Altruism: Why are humans altruistic? Jim Holt writes about it in The Way We Live Now: Good Instincts.

Thursday, March 6th, 2008: Part two

Check out this article by the infamous Richard Owen in The Times (not the New York Times) Pope is warned of a green Antichrist. Kind of interesting. Vladimir Solovyov is interesting too. Never heard of him. Here he is on Wiki.

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

From March 6th’s concluding prayer at Lauds.

Lord, we are your servants and we pray for your clemency.
Set right by penitence and trained by good works,
may we wholeheartedly follow your commandments
and come unstained to the paschal feast.

What is faith? Check-out Charlotte was Both for a long quote by Pope Benedict XVI.

It is a big place

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead!

My soul, O my soul, rise up! Why are you sleeping? The end draws near, and soon you will be troubled. Watch, then, that Christ your God may spare you, for He is everywhere present and fills all things.

From the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete

I got this from the website of the Byzantine Catholic Church in America. I was looking into stories of the kidnapping of Msgr. Paulos Faraj Rahho, Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Iraq.

hanging in there.

It is Tuesday February 19th. The last time I noted anything was 15 days ago.

Well, I didn’t go to the caucus, but Obama was the big winner in Kansas on February 4th.

Now it is Thursday, February 28th.

Headline in the NYTs: 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says. This is an amazing stat. I wonder what the incarceration rate for adults was in Great Britain in the early 19th Century?

Faith

It is Monday, February 4th and a beautiful day it is, sunny and 65 degrees.

It will get cold tonight and tomorrow is forecast to bring up to 5 inches of snow.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. A paraphrase from memory of Pope Benedict XVI’s message for Lent:

The work of Lent is prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

What am I going to do for Lent? I have been thinking about it. Read the classic The Day Christ Died by Jim Bishop. I guess it is a “classic” for its genre. I am also thinking that I should do the things I set as goals during Advent but didn’t do. Contact old friends and family whom I have, or nearly have, lost contact with. Write two hours a day, read two hours a day, and pray more. We’ll see.

What about fasting and almsgiving?

Been reading a bit of John Updike today. Due Considerations is due back at the Library in a couple days and I marked several pieces I want to read before returning it. Today I read his essay about the future of faith written for The New Yorker. Here is a quote:

“Faith is not so much a binary pole as a quantum state, which tends to vanish when closely examined.”

It is Saturday, January 26th, 2008 and we are going to celebrate Khia’s birthday today. Yea!!!

Wisdom 7:7 - 16

I prayed, and understanding was given me;
I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.
I esteemed her more than sceptres and thrones;
compared with her, I held riches as nothing.
I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer,
for compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand,
and beside her silver ranks as mud.
I loved her more than health or beauty,
preferred her to the light,
since her radiance never sleeps.

May God grant me to speak as he would wish
and express thoughts worthy of his gifts,
since he himself is the guide of Wisdom,
since he directs the sages.
We are indeed in his hand, we ourselves and our words,
with all our understanding, too, and technical knowledge.

Well, it is now Tuesday, January 29th, 2008, my 54th birthday. Also it is the birthdays of my two youngest grandkids, my home state of Kansas, my girlfriend’s younger sister, my two oldest grandkids’ dad, Oprah, and countless others too. We’ll all have dinner tonight. Well, maybe not Oprah and Pam’s sister will be in New York but you know what I mean.

The above passage from Wisdom is part of last Saturday’s Mass readings, if I remember correctly. I copied it here Saturday because it was meaningful to me during my morning prayers. I’m not sure why now.

I know it is not the Christmas season now but I just listened to Jars of Clay: Christmas Songs by Jars of Clay. It was really a pleasant album to hear. I really liked it. I will be listening to this CD some more over the next few days. Jars of Clay’s sound on this album is a bit how I hear Christmas and winter, so it rests well with me. Though it has some weak lyrics.

I preceded it with brief segments of a few pieces from The Chariot’s The Fiancée. This is some high-energy punk. It hurt my throat to listen to the screaming on this album but Josh Scogin is a great screamer. I doubt I will listen to The Fiancée much after today. Screaming punk is not really my style but this CD is an interesting and wild ride. The lyrics seem a little forced at times just to make a rhyme. Check out this review on Absolutepunk—http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=224905.

Books read so far in 2008:

Pope John XXIII, Shepherd of the Modern World by Peter Hebblethwaite

The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside Story of How The Pope Was Elected and Where He Will Take The Catholic Church by John L. Allen, Jr.

Sad huh? I am a little lazy with my reading. I have thirty or so books checked out from the library right now. There are two books I am currently reading:

Marking the Hours by Eamon Duffy and A Secular Age by Charles Taylor

Lets hope I can note these books as read soon.

Human

It’s Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 and the child Samuel is on his way.

Also, hitting the Roman Catholic news and blog circuit today is the cancellation of Pope Benedict’s planned speech this Thursday at a Rome University because of student and Professor protests. It might be instructive to remember Benedict’s revulsion to the student protests in the 60s and 70s, and, of course, Italian politics.

I am surprised about the Manichean plots so many see in this, possibly including the Pope himself. Actually, I don’t think Pope Benedict sees conspiracies in this situation but given his demonstrated ability to not foresee consequences to his public statements it will be interesting to follow this story as it develops. I will be interested to read the text of his intended talk when it becomes public, which I hope is soon.

The New Year is underway.

Monday January 14, 2008. A new year and my first post. This almost means my first writing of the New Year. A late start, but a start nonetheless. Where will it go? We will see.

I should note that the New Year really began today for me. It is Monday following the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Advent and Christmas are over.

This is not quite my first writing this year. I have been working on my Book of Hours. Anyone out there creating your own Book of Hours for use in prayer?

All we know is this world, in the conventional meaning of “know.” But what is the conventional meaning of know, or any other word for that matter?

The following is from a Steven Pinker piece in this past Sunday’s NYT’s Sunday Magazine. I hope Christians can learn to think about the world and morality in a real, rational sort of way.

“Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?”

Here is were I pick-it-up today, Thursday, November 29, 2007

I just heard on NPR’s hourly broadcast that Senator Henry Hyde of Illinois died at 2:30 a.m. this morning. An ardent opponent of abortion Senator Hyde is remembered for the infamous “Hyde amendment” to a budget bill in 1976. President Bush, an opponent of legal abortion also is quoted in today’s NYT’s obituary, “This fine man believed in the power of freedom, and he was a tireless champion of the weak and forgotten. He used his talents to build a more hopeful America and promote a culture of life.”

As what follows will indicate, I don’t agree with Mr. Hyde. But there was a time I did. I remember sitting with a group of Elders from the Lawrence Bible Chapel sometime back in the 1970’s discussing how Christians should be politically active. The pro-life anti-abortion agenda was high on my list of crucial political issues at the time and I appreciated Senator Hyde as an ally in this effort. But I have changed my view.

I picked up this fragment of a hymn by Saint Ephrem the Syrian on the blog Charlotte was Both. It is translated from a recent talk of Pope Benedict’s. It is from a hymn on the nativity of Christ (De Nativitate11, 6-8), very advent in nature. I am thinking about what I will do this advent. This is the beginning of the chief scandal and mystery of orthodox Christianity, that God would become human. What does it mean? What if it is true? It is worth meditating on for a few weeks, hence the season of advent.

The Lord came to you
to become a servant.

The Word came to you
to be [quiet] in your womb.

Lightning came to you
without making any noise.

The Shepherd came to you -
and becomes the newborn Lamb
with his submissive plaint.

The womb of Mary
has changed the roles:

He who created all things
took possession in poverty.

The Highest came to you
but he entered with humility.

Splendor came to you,
but dressed in humble rags.

He who makes all things grow
knew hunger.

He who waters everything
knew thirst.

Bare and stripped, he came from you,
he who clothes everything in beauty.

And I wrote this on Tuesday, October 16, 2007.

Beautiful fall day. Sunny, the windows open, 60 degrees Fahrenheit, light breeze from the west rustling the leaves—still green— in the cottonwood just outside my window, kids on the playground. I am sitting at my computer listening as the light crescendos of wind roll in the leaves, feeling thankful, but vigilant. I saw the first true fiery red fall leaf on the Fire Bush yesterday, glowing.

Before I go on with my story I need to respond to some reading I encountered on several blogs today. Also, I want to formally put my thoughts down on abortion. I am Catholic. I am pro-choice. I believe abortion is a woman’s right. The morning after pill should be readily available over the counter, and during the early weeks of pregnancy abortion should be a woman’s right (insert the words “God given” prior to “right” if you want, as in a “right” that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,” to burrow the words of the Declaration of Independence) to chose along with any other personal health issues she may have. I don’t see a contradiction between being Catholic and pro-choice.

But this position—if I have to call it that—stands in contradiction with the party line laid down by the Pope and publicly supported by all our Bishops (at least all the ones I know of, but I’m not a specialist on the subject), and many Catholics (but not all and possibly not most Catholics). By my way of thinking, the Bishops have got it wrong.

At the very least, I think it is time to accept that we live in a secular and pluralistic society (this is a good thing by the way, as well as a fact and a good political goal) in which many, many Americans (probably most Americans) of good will believe abortion is a woman’s right. Some time I will write at length about abortion and gay rights, two of the areas the Church has it wrong. For now let me mention an op-ed essay that is yet to appear Abortion isn't a religious issue written by Garry Wills in a recent Washington Post.

What got me thinking about this at the moment where some comments posted today (that is last October 16th) on Darwincatholic.blogspot.com.

On with the story... (I copied this from a previous post (October 11, 2007), revised it, and then wrote on)

One thing about this project is its dynamic nature—it is a living thing—it is my life anyway! Foremost it is about my contemporary wrangling about/with God and God’s place in my life and the life of the world as well. My spirituality today is the principal concern here. Does God exist? And if so, what does that mean? What do I do about it?

But it is also a story of my past, a past that in a certain sense never changes even as it intrudes on the present through my memory and becomes a part of my living. This is to imply that it is not fixed in my imagination. The past changes through alchemy of the present. Telling the story is a tedious process and I often lose track of it in the living of it, which is much less tedious and much more important. So, where did I leave off last? Ah, yes.

It is about this time of year, October 1971, cool fall days. Summer is over and a great summer it was. I spent the summer in Colorado camping and backpacking. But I am back home, I am back in school, the leaves are changing colors, and I am a serious senior in High School getting ready to embark on life.

I have been attending BASIC for several weeks and I am beginning to believe these folks are on to something with all this Jesus talk. They are joyful, serious, young, pretty, and have long hair like me. I have been reading the bible, I am predisposed to believe it because of my Catholic upbringing, I like the singing, I like hanging out with my friends, and I am serious too.

A parenthetical moment: I believe that the world is a closed system. So why do I pray? What is prayer—magic, manipulation, psychological trickery? I don’t know, but I do pray. But primarily, I believe it is of vital importance to recognize that what happens in this world is of human origin. This as a fundamental fact. Just as digestion is a fundamental biological fact that has an evolutional history along with the rest of our body so is our consciousness, in every way, a fundamental biological fact. Within our consciousness resides experience, thoughts, beliefs, rationality, religion, language, abstraction, and the list could go on and on. But this whole complex experience is the fruit of a biological process with an evolutional history. This has profound consequences for the understanding of human behavior and it impinges directly on politics, social life, morality, culture, and religion.

Will this project slake my hunger to know? Allow me to doff my skepticism?

Can I believe Christianity is a true myth? How does history, a closed natural system, or materialism relate to ideas of intervention, suspension, violation, or any outside impingement upon the natural system relate to this fundamental belief in human agency and the evolution of that agency?

Francis Schaeffer insisted on the historicity of the fall of humankind. Given what we know of the evolution of the species Homo sapiens, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae, how can we even think of the historicity of the fall? We can’t. We know nothing about it. It is a myth. The scheme of the fall of humankind is used to explain experience and for pedagogy. And its not a bad idea. The concept of sin is something I always said I believed in during my strong agnostic days.

Back to my story....

I liked these people. There was a joy and certainty that I experienced when singing with them. When did I come to believe myself? It is hard to say. I always told the story of when I was at Danny McDowell’s apartment during the fall/winter of 1971/1972. I really don’t remember much from the actual event; I remember the rudiments of the story I told back then.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The following quote-within-a-quote is from a book review titled, Twenty Centuries of Conversation, by Dennis O’Brien in America. The book reviewed is The Secular Age, by Charles Taylor (not that friend of televangelist Pat Robinson, the corrupt diamond peddler and former President of Liberia, but the Catholic philosopher from Montreal and McGill University): “To be heard, the church will have to abandon “a longstanding obsession...to nail down [issues] with ultimate, unattainable and finally self-destructive precision.”” How true. I think the current Pope doesn’t see this (Has any Pope since John XXIII?). Our secular age is as much (more!) gift as bane.

From the article, Apocalypse Now?, by Stephen Holmes in The Nation comes this long quote-within-a-quote. It is something to think about. The article is a review of Chalmers Johnson’s new book Nemesis, the third volume of "an inadvertent trilogy" that includes Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. Here it is: “Johnson speculates that we have already entered the "last days" of the Republic. America's post-World War II "imperialism," he predicts, will soon put an end to self-government in the United States: "I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent." The destruction of the American Republic may even illustrate a profound historical regularity, he implies: "Over any fairly lengthy period of time, successful imperialism requires that a domestic republic or a domestic democracy change into a domestic tyranny." He even thinks that the American military is now "ripe" for "a Julius Caesar"--that is, for "a revolutionary, military populist with little interest in republican niceties so long as some form of emperorship lies at the end of his rocky path."” This is, of course, an intentional juxtaposing of the Rome Empire with the U.S. Certainly a historical parallel but not a certainty. Though I think we need to reread Jacques Ellul. The end of the Republic is possible.

From the article, The Sting of Death: Why We Yearn for Eternity, by Charles Taylor and published in Commonweal. The article is an excerpt from his voluminous new book A Secular Age. “The secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured. People seem at a safe distance from religion, and yet they are very moved to know that there are dedicated believers, like Mother Teresa (I would add such figures as the Dali Lama in there too). The unbelieving world, well used to disliking Pius XII, was bowled over by John XXIII. A pope just had to sound like a Christian, and many immemorial resistances melted. Il fallait y penser. It’s as though many people who don’t want to follow want nevertheless to hear the message of Christ, want it to be proclaimed out there. The paradox was evident in the response to the late pope. Many people were inspired by John Paul’s public, peripatetic preaching about love, about world peace, about international economic justice. They are thrilled that these things are being said. But even many Catholics among his admirers didn’t feel that they must follow all his moral injunctions. And in an expressive, post-Durkheimian world, this is not a contradiction. It makes perfect sense. Such are the strange and complex conditions of belief in our age.” Indeed, it makes good sense.

work day

Thursday, October 11, 2007

physiognomy precipice mendacious

Today’s news (October 9, 2007); well, yesterday’s news today October 11, 2007. Meaning not October 10th but “yesterday’s” as in passé, old news supervened by events or by the news cycle.

It just gets more complicated. Now Turkey Says Its Troops Can Cross Iraq Border By Sebnem Arsu on the NYT website.

How Baboons Think (Yes, Think) By Nicholas Wade also on today’s NYT website.

The article is about research being done by Drs. Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth on baboon society. Baboon society is matrilineal; it follows mother-daughter lines of descent, hence, it is hereditary from mother too daughter. Data also indicates that there can be eight or nine matrilines in a troop that are ranked as well and this hierarchy can remain stable across generations. There also is a male hierarchy too that can be in competition with the female hierarchy, form alliances with it, or with elements of it, to gain mutual benefits. But the male hierarchy is dynamic with males changing troops and fighting among themselves.

Here is a quote from a member of the British royal family, Princess Michael of Kent, in response to learning of this research, “I always knew that when people who aren’t like us claim that hereditary rank is not part of human nature, they must be wrong. Now you’ve given me evolutionary proof!”

A little folk biology here?

On with the story...

One thing about this project is its dynamic nature—the project is a living thing—it is my life anyway! But it is also a story of my past that in certain ways never changes. Telling the story is a tedious process I often lose track of in the living, which is much less tedious. Where did I leave off last? Ah, yes.

It is about this time of year, I am a senior in High School, I have been attending BASIC for several weeks and I am beginning to believe these folks are on to something with all this Jesus talk. They are joyful, serious, young, pretty, have long hair like me. I have been reading the bible, I am predisposed to believe it because of my Catholic upbringing, I like the singing, I like hanging out with my friends, and I am serious.

A parenthetical moment: I believe that the world is a closed system. So why do I pray? What is prayer; magic, manipulation, psychological trickery? I don’t know.

But I believe it is of vital importance to recognize this as a fundamental fact. Just as digestion is a fundamental biological fact that has an evolutional history along with the rest of our body so is our consciousness in every way. Within our consciousness resides our experience, thoughts, beliefs, rationality, religion, language, abstraction, and the list could go on and on. Breaking it down into smaller pieces. That’s what it does. But this whole complex is a biological process with an evolutional history. This has profound consequences for the understanding of human behavior, hence in impinges directly on politics, social life, morality, culture, and religion.

Will this project slake my hunger to know? Allow me to doff my skepticism?

Can I believe Christianity is a true myth? How does history, a natural system, materialism relate to ideas of any intervention, suspension, violation, or any outside impingement upon the natural system relate?

Francis Schaeffer insisted on the historicity of the fall of humankind. Given what we know of the evolution of the species Homo sapiens, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae, how can we even think of the historicity of the fall? We can’t. We know nothing about it. It is a myth about the belief of a fall used to explain and for pedagogy.

short today

Monday, October 8, 2007

I have heard you, Lord,

And my stomach churns within me.

From Habakkuk 3

Maladroit, I am for this project, this work of faith, writing, and exploration of my inner self, not unlike my redoubtable inabilities in relationships. I can become too distrait to do it. The result is exiguous writing and a paroxysm of inactivity. I can be facetious about it, but this is a basic component of my personality just as much as the inevitable supervenes; I resume work. But there is a sense, a feeling, and the possibility, that this project will be, or could be, a bouleversement, a returning to a vibrant faith after a long period of agnosticism.

I used today’s word of the day, maladroit, as well as the last seven days words of the day in the preceding paragraph. Every day I get one from Dictionary.com in my e-mail.

From today’s reading:

Farming With Junk: A Rumination on Fidelity By Kyle Kramer in the October 15, 2007 issue of America. Some quotes:

I recognize the limits of my equipment, which was old when I bought it. I try to be easy on it, not ask more of it than it can deliver—as I would with an elderly person walking gingerly on a trick knee or a weak hip. In fact, my fleet of aging machines reminds me of an elder-care facility.

For all our practicality, I suspect that one of the less-admitted reasons we keep old equipment around is that we have grown attached to it, even as it rusts away. On the deepest level I think we realize—or fancy—that our equipment has been faithful to us and deserves the same from us. To be a good farmer demands fidelity, a degree of patience and commitment that seems out of vogue in a culture always fascinated with the future and the next new thing. We farmers deal with very old things: the ageless cycle of seasons and uncertain weather, the necessary bonds of family and community and the land itself —the source and sustenance of all living things, which might build an inch of topsoil over a thousand years but lose it to carelessness and erosion in just a few.

And what or who, after all, does not get old? We all run down; we all live within ever-encroaching limits of time or energy or health. So how do we respond to this undeniable fact? Do we—as farmers and as a society—pretend we can run and hide from mortality, finitude and age? Do we hide wrinkles or rust, constantly trade in our spouses or our equipment for younger models, look the other way from anyone or anything whose age and infirmity remind us of our own inevitable decline and demise?

Or do we pledge fidelity to the old things—and old people—that have given us much over a long life? Do we recognize that they might still have some life left in them and contributions to make, even as they get crotchety and need more attention and care, even as they struggle with incontinence of mechanical or bodily fluids? Do we honor these long lives and accompany them to the scrap heap or the grave with thanksgiving and gentleness? Do we show a little mercy and tender affection in the hope that as we age, break down and become less able, others might show us the same?

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

In The Smear This Time by Anita Hill, her Op-Ed piece in the October 2, 2007, New York Times, Ms Hill responds to additional negative comments by Clarence Thomas in his new book. Regardless of the past—I can’t judge—it is a disgrace to the Supreme Court, and to Thomas as well, that he writes this book. He is in a particular position, one of the most prestigious and powerful positions in our Nation, and he fulminates viciously about a former employee. I think he and Bush will be marked by history as equals in one thing.

Jimmy Carter Faces Down Darfur Officials reads an Associated Press headline October 3, 2007. I think Carter is the best President we have had, definitely, the finest former President. Maybe Clinton will imitate him; he is young, popular, still handsome (so is Carter), and morally engaged. We’ll see.

Stanley, I Presume by Paul Theroux in the September 30, 2007 edition of the NYT is a review of the book Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer.

By Tim Jeal. Sounds very interesting.

just what it is

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Today’s news from my web reading:

Supreme Court Turns Down Cases on Religious Separation is a headline in today’s New York Times about two cases concerning how religious institutions relate to those they serve when that institution works and serves in the “secular” world. Significantly, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings that restricted the religious institution’s freedom by requiring the institution to act contrary to it’s own conscience, if one can imply that an institution has a conscience; Disparities by Steve Coll in the October 8, 2007 issue of the New Yorker about the Jena 6.. Good comments; And Desert Storm: Understanding the capricious God of the Psalms by James Wood in the October 1, 2007 issue of the New Yorker. This is a review by Wood of Robert Alter’s new translation of the Psalms of the Hebrew bible, The Book of Psalms. The translation sounds exciting (The Lawrence, Kansas Public Library is purchasing this translation), but this review is excellent as a read by itself. Wood is one of the best in the business.

Memory, recollection, history; what are they? This is an area I need to think about and discuss.

“Memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information.” This sentence is a quote from the introduction to the entry titled Memory on Wikipedia. Not a bad scientific definition. But a few things are left out. What about a species ability to remember together? How about the concept of “collective memory”? How does this relate to “history”?

“Maurice Halbwachs argued that memory, despite its seemingly internal nature, could not exist outside a social context. For our individual memories to exist, he argued, they must be constructed and edited against the backdrop collective narratives. Moreover, he argued, we often incorporate accounts other people’s past experiences into the narratives we construct as memory.” The preceding quote is directly from Wikipedia too.

Halbwachs is credited with the invention of the concept “collective memory.” The collective memory of the times I grew-up in and their narratives, imbibed as easily as breathing, influence my memories. I tell my story structured, as it were, through tropes of my times. But the interesting thing is, at least interesting to me, is that I have my own narrative that structures my memories.