July 03, 2009 | |
The bottom of my UWEC tuition bill:
The Legislature and the Governor have authorized $1,189,756,579 of state funds for the University of Wisconsin System and its students during the 2008-09 academic year. This is a tuition subsidy of $8,041 per student from the taxpayers of Wisconsin.
June 30, 2009 | |
I've been using the Liber Usualis for all of my chanting needs for the past few months (in which time I also picked up a copy of Wheelock's and began translating the Psalms from the Vulgate). I think I'll explain my predicament in economic terms:
Concerning the goods market, the supply of the Liturgica Horarum is extremely low, provoking a high price level (and I suppose a low national output for the Vatican). The demand for the Liturgica Horarum has been steadily increasing for a number of reasons, despite it being completely unnecessary and totally expensive. Mainly, a recent influx of M1 money (as a result of graduating high school... who knew?) caused what I guess would be small time inflation in my wallet.
I should add that I was extra inspired by an article about Padre Pio which reported that he slept 4 hours at night with two 2 hour naps during the day and ate 3 grams of food a day. And also by St. Isadore who had 2 angels help him work in the fields so that his boss didn't get mad at him for always being late because he was at mass. Seems to me that God will allow you to get beyond your little human weaknesses if you ask him (well... not that kind of teasing asking). I figured the books were a bit expensive to have sitting on my book shelf, as nice as they would be employed in such an instance. I always wanted to chant in college, both as a way of getting all the music in me focused on something that will get me to heaven, and as a way of reminding myself (as I lock myself in a small soundproof room) that Christians are called to a life completely different than the rest of the world.
Warning, Long Digression: On that note, I want to start a red cardigan society at Eau Claire: red because that's the color of martyrs, and cardigans because they are wildly different, but horribly practical at the same time, just like the martyrs. The members of The Most Noble Chapter of the Red Cardigan Society of Eau Claire would wear red cardigans to class when the weather was fit for such attire. We'd never advertise what were doing; we'd act as if cardigans are it, because they really are! It'd be intended as a way of encouraging those kids who have an inkling that Christians are somehow called to something outside of this world to completely embrace it, and be encouraged by the "cool" guy walking across the lawn in a red cardigan.
***** This is from the Good Friday Matins. I consider myself supremely lucky that on the day of my first Holy Eucharist and Confirmation I prayed Matins and Lauds at the beautiful St. Agnes . Throughout the two hours candles are put out one by one, until only one remains. This one candle is then hidden behind the alter for a while, and then all those chanting pound on their books until the candle is brought back out. (Watch Father Stromburg of Holy Family during the entrance: when everybody is ready to kneel he pounds on his hymnal, and the whole procession kneels.) I'm also glad I didn't have to sing a song after the festivities as so many poor children are forced to do these days.
June 28, 2009 | |
This year I didn't sleep all night before Pentecost mass, and I was (understandably) falling asleep during the mass. I remember getting the hiccups during the Eucharistic rite, and I had no doubt in my mind that God loved me. I suppose that was the best I was going to be able to do that day. It’d be ridiculous for me to look at that and say “you didn’t pray that mass like you should have, and it was most inappropriate to be smiling wildly because you were hiccupping.” It’s okay to love God like a 6 year old on occasion!
I ended up at St. Alphonsus church in Brooklyn Center at 5:30 this Sunday for mass. I should include that it was 5:30 pm, because the story would have been different 12 hours earlier (and a average 50 years older... there seems to be a positive relationship between mean age and quality of sacred music). I got to mass very early, knowing that I was going to have difficulties praying such a mass. God is good to me though, and I was laughing from the very beginning: the entrance hymn was in 5/4 and it reminded me to no end of "Take 5". To actually pay attention to the mass I had to wipe the thought of the ridiculous entrance from my head, otherwise I'd substantially back up my claim that "The Gather Hymnal" ripped off Dave Brubeck. What else could I have gotten out of that ridiculous song than a good laugh with God!
I'm a big fan of child-like love of God, because it makes all the sense in the world. It's not paradoxical in the least to say that God, the fountain of all intellect, is sometimes best approached by children with little intellect. It came as a bit of a shock to me to think that I could sit in the chairs at adoration, but that's what God wants from us: he wants to live with us. God is everything, which means that he is both a God you can sit in a chair and talk to, and he is a God that you must kneel before and wonder at. He is a God that you can say "I love you" and he is pleased, but he is also a God that you have to understand. He is an indulgent God, and gives his children every little thing they want, but he is also a demanding God who expects you to deny yourself everything.
It’s great that we can act like children around God. We can even have wild swings of temperament around him and make great resolutions that no man tied to his intellect would keep. Such abandonment is so pleasing to him. But you can’t live that. It’s not as if there are rules for such things (you can only laugh at the entrance hymn once a month) either, which makes it all the more difficult. The 5:30 parishioners of St. Alphonsus act like 6-year olds every Sunday, where as the 10:00 parishioners of St. Agnes never act like 6-year olds (even those who are properly aged for such behavior). I can’t hiccup my way through mass every day, but I can’t be mad at God for not being able to pray the mass either.
So yes, you do have to act like a 6-year old every now and then.
June 23, 2009 | |
They've just got it figured out. This is the best:
I want to tell Ms. Graham that if she only knew how many hell-raisers and “bad girls” have come to the convent — and stayed — that she would probably have seemed like a wall flower in comparison.
| |
I've been perusing government websites checking out national debt information, and I had to chuckle a bit. The Congressional Budgets Office proudly proclaimed that it was the 3rd best place to work in the government. Then the Bureau of the Public Debt proclaimed that it was the 4th best place to work. Oh government...
What I've been learning is that we have our undies in far to tight of a bundle when we discuss the national debt. Here's how it works.
The national debt is a whopping 11.4 trillion. About 3 trillion is held by foreigners. What that means is that 8.4 trillion dollars is owed to Americans by Americans. So even though the debt per-person is 37 thousand dollars, they only owe 9 thousand to somebody other than themselves. Of course all those evil rich capitalists own all the debt while the poor victims own nothing.
And only government could set up a system where a people owe themselves trillions of dollars.
June 22, 2009 | |
It so happens that every once in a while God sees fit to put me in a group of people who I have no reason to be around other than to pray for them. Recently I was in such an environment and (this is the one subject that everybody in the world has an opinion on) college advise was being dispensed. The general consensus was summarized articulately as "you have the freedom to do whatever you want".
Freedom is a horribly popular theme in high school too, especially when uniforms, rules and expectations are the norm. Everybody seems to think that it would be freeing to somehow make a clothing statement by it's absence, or that what is really holding them back from being free is that the glue which adheres their hand to their cellphone must be (most annoyingly, no doubt) removed at 8 and reapplied at 3. That's no freedom at all though. It's freedom to be miserable, sure, but what kind of freedom is that? Unfortunately freedom is rarely defined literally as "the ability to do good as one pleases". Instead it's only "to do as one pleases".
Perhaps Mssrs Miriam and Webster assumed on the common sence of English language speakers. What slave ever said "thank the Lord that I have been given the freedom to be enslaved while these pitiable white men do not have the freedoms I enjoy"? It's a mistaken notion of sin which fosters the statement "you can do everything you want". If the speaker understood that that which does not get us to heaven simply serves to make us miserable they could never celebrate the ability to distance themselves from happiness.
In the end you don't really gain many freedoms in college. The other word I'm sick of is "success", and college won't give you any opportunity at that either. What success is it to make money when that money means nothing compared to the riches God offers us every day, free of charge? What freedom is it to drink like a fish when that will only ever make you miserable. Maybe you'll be able to supply a fair amount of temporary happiness for yourself, but once you get tired of convincing yourself that your happy your true state will set in. We already have the freedom to pursue God. If were enslaved on earth we're all the more pleasing to him. That is freedom.
June 18, 2009 | |
"In 2005, U.S. consumers spent (in real terms) $7878 billion - an amount that exceeded their total after-tax income! Businesses invested $1921 billion, even though total U.S. saving was negative [Investment = Savings, theoretically]. The Federal government spent $1988 billion, financing more than one-fourth of that amount through borrowing."
That's from my economics book. It's frighting enough to begin with that American's are doing everything on credit, but it's even more frighting that this credit is foreign credit. All of this spending offsets the inflationary effects of massive imports.
And what a social commentary! The rest of the world is saving their money so that businesses can increase production while America is consuming like crazy and starving their businesses. Maybe there is something to being a capitalist pig
