Maria's Music

Ave Maria! Draft

2011-01-05T21:26:00.002-06:00

Ave Maria!

The Council of Ephesus (431) officially bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin Mary the glorious title of theotokos, Mother of God, which was already well used, in an effort to combat the heresy of Nestorius who taught that Christ had two distinct natures that were only loosely united, contrary to the Nicene Creed, written a century earlier. Christians today universally recognize the error of Nestorius, but few recognize the sublime tactic by which it was crushed. Keep in mind that Mary had nothing to do with the debate at hand, and yet the Council’s teaching wonderfully addresses the problem at hand, for in declaring Mary, an ordinary human, to be the Mother of God, it made Christ the product of human generation, no different than you and me, but in making Mary the Mother of God it reasserted His divinity. Because Christ was born from Mary, He was human, but because He was also fully God, Mary was the Mother of God. She is surely not the mother of divinity, that is the nature of the Trinity before the beginning of time, but the true Mother, by means of human generation, of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. The Council could have just as easily reasserted the Nicene Creed’s almost obnoxious list of attributes concerning Christ’s nature: “the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. ”, but enlightened by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit they chose to use Mary as the vehicle of squishing Christ’s two natures into one person.

Through Mary Christianity becomes a human creed, one that embraces every facet of our humanity from our anxieties and fears, to our happiness and joy, for it is through Mary that the incomparably sublime fact of God made man was made reality. The Incarnation was not necessary for God to accomplish man’s salvation “for God with His omnipotent power could have restored human nature in many other ways”, says St. Thomas Aquinas (ST: III, 1, 2), and yet St. Augustine also affirms that, “there was not a more fitting way of healing our misery” (De Trin. Xii, 10). With all of creation subject to his almighty reign, the Father chose to Incarnation not out of necessity, but because of the incomprehensible beauty of this plan of salvation, by which, “the only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in His divinity, assumed our nature, so that He, made man, might make us gods” (Opusc. 57:1-4).

The first words of the glorious salvation given to us were, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Lk 1:28). God Himself saw the Incarnation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin to be the most fitting method of our salvation, and through the mediation of the angel Gabriel He commenced salvation by saluting the Virgin. What the Council of Ephesus realized was that our salvation was not a matter of metaphysics or scriptural interpretation, but a matter of God made man in the person of Christ and imitation God’s plan, the Council reaffirmed that one of the most proper way to honor our Savior and to thank him for the humiliation He endured for our salvation is to honor His Holy Mother. In fact, when we fail to honor the Mother of Jesus, we fail to honor the Father, for we reject His plan of salvation and substitute our own. When we fail to give Mary the pride of place in salvation history God gave her we fail to love the effects of God, and in so doing fail to love God Himself.

In fact, failure to adore the entirety of God’s plan for the salvation of man, Holy Scripture gives us reason to believe, was the reason for the downfall of Lucifer and his followers. The 12th chapter of Revelation has “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars: and being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered”, representing the Blessed Virgin Mary and the twelve Apostles, the means through which Christ would be brought into the world. St. John continues, “and behold a great red dragon... that stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son,” representing Satan who, with malice directed towards God, rejected the idea that God should humiliate Himself to be born of a woman, and further that the faithful would have to give this woman the honor due to a mother of God. The woman brings forth the child and then, “there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil”. The chapter tells us that rejecting and despising the Incarnation, which by Divine decree exalts the Mother of God, is the great sin of the devil and his followers.

Yet the Christian life is never about fear, as St. John reminds us in his first letter, but about love, and we need not fear damnation from our lack of honoring the Blessed Virgin in the past, but rather fly to her now and give ourselves to her completely, for she is not only the Mother of Christ, but Our Mother. While all of the Apostles are certainly unworthy of the duties Christ entrusts them with, John shines above the rest as the most worthy of the disciples, for not only was he the beloved disciple, but he was also the only disciple to remain with Jesus under the Cross. As a final gift to the disciple who He loved, Jesus gave His own mother, entrusting her to John and John to her with the words “woman, behold your son” and “son, behold your mother” (19: 26-27). Further, let us realize that the Evangelist does not use his name in this passage, but rather refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, assuring us that Jesus gives His mother to all of His disciples whom He loves. To the disciple who remains loyal to Jesus He gives the most precious gift of His Mother and therefore, let us not despise the gifts of Christ, but rather beg him to grant them to us, make a feeble attempt to be found more worthy of them, and embrace them when we receive them!

The most appropriate devotion of often addressing ourselves to Mary as our Mother, imploring her to plead our cause with our Father as all mothers plead their child’s cause with their fathers, reaches its perfection in the recitation of the Most Holy Rosary. In this devotion, given to the faithful by the Virgin herself in the 13th century in an apparition to St. Dominic, one meditates on the mysteries of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection, while reciting the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. As with all Marian devotion, the Rosary’s ultimate focus is not on Mary, but rather it uses the Hail Mary as a means for meditating on Christ. This is most appropriate, for Mary knew her Son far better than any of His disciples from whom we get the Holy Scriptures, and her love for Him was far greater than any man’s. And far from being exhaustingly long or repetitious, for one who immerses himself in it, the Rosary truly is the rose garden that its name means, for not only does it inundate one with the sweetness of divine grace and mystery, but it offers the thorn-less and most fragrant rose of love to the Blessed Virgin and her Son.

So pleasing is this devotion to Almighty God that in all modern apparitions the Blessed Virgin has implored the faithful to pray the Rosary every day. In the 1917 apparitions at Fatima, 3 weeks before the October Revolution in Russia, the Blessed Virgin urged the three children present to consecrate Russia to her, lest its evils spread throughout the world and God is truly the only one who knows what great service these three children’s prayer provided for our world today. We see that the Rosary is a most powerful tool against the activities of evil in the world, which the faithful have a duty to make frequent use of for the good of their neighbors. Not only is the Rosary a powerful means for by which the whole world is aided, but through the Rosary the Blessed Virgin promises to lead us in a life of true virtue and good works and to obtain for us from God the grace of final perseverance.

So, like the Council of Ephesus, yes, like the Father Himself, let us Christians cast aside our arguments which so quickly descend into a loveless pedantry and embrace the love of the Virgin Mary. Let us sing her praises loudly, for in so doing we sing the praises of Our Glorious God, and the marvelous salvation which He wrought for us!

Ave Maria!

The Purpose and Nature of Divine Revelation

2010-12-28T19:52:00.002-06:00

After a good long period of not having time to formally expound upon the thoughts of my day, at least for the next month or so, I thought I would begin doing so again. Recently I encountered an interesting argument: God is at the top of things, and He created the Bible. Man got their hands on the Bible and set to work trying to understand the thing. This is of course a formidable task, and one that man is incapable of doing wholly correctly, so you get Church A which has 95% of the things write, Church B which has 85% of the things right, etc. Note that Church B is likely to get right some of Church A's incorrect 5%. The logical result seems to be that the rational man's job is to see which Church has 95% right, and hop into that boat.

The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of divine revelation. The theory does not allow for any solid intent on God's part when He brought about the creation of the Bible, because He let it sit there and have man quarrel over it when He was done. A failure to follow through always indicates a disinterest in the whole process. And the underinvestment the theory supposes is not a small matter, it is crucial to note: these are issues of eternal salvation. Jesus has several “unless” phrases in the Gospels, these are a few:

· For I tell you that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharasees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:20)

· Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 18:3)

· No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish (Luke 13:3)

· Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5)

Now, if I went up to a very young child and told them to “be just”, they would have no idea how to act. In fact, ask an American what “justice” is, and you will get wildly varying answers. The point is, not only is justice not an innate faculty of being human, neither does it infallibly come with age (and even a generous degree of education). Even among Christian denominations, what is just is disagreed upon. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception, abortion and euthanasia are all intrinsically unjust, while many other denominations would hold that one, two, or three of these are just acts. It seems petty to make matters of social teaching matters of salvation, but that is what Christ did in His Divine wisdom, and that is what Christians also must do. What exactly being a “little child” means (is it being obedient to Holy Mother Church?), how we ought to do penance (must we follow the mandated days of abstinence and fasting, at a minimum?) and what being born again of water and the Holy Ghost is (are only baptized souls brought to Heaven?) are matters of eternal importance. These are issues that denominations disagree upon, and they are matters of salvation. If God gave us the Bible and let us figure it out, He is no better than a parent who lets his kid play with hand grenades: a certain number will keep the pin in, and a certain number will not.

If we hold that God actively wants us to be in Heaven with Him, He did not leave the interpretation of the Bible in matters of salvation (which is far reaching) up to chance. Rather, He gave the world Holy Scripture inside of and through the mediation of the Roman Church that God’s involvement in the world might be active and continuous. God does this through the Holy Spirit, which was promised by Jesus to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who procedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me (John 15:26). The Holy Spirit continues to give testimony to Jesus through the Gospel and the continued study of its interpretation.

Further, the Spirit is the “Spirit of truth”. As St John’s First Epistle reminds us, “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness” (1 John 1:5). Here “light” and “darkness” symbolize truth/falsity (as the subsequent verses state explicitly), good/evil, justice/wrong, etc. Thus, in the Spirit of Truth (who is a member of the Trinity), there is no falsity. One of the truly wonderful presuppositions to theology is that “God is light”. Wherever He is, truth is, and a complete truth. The mystery of the Incarnation which we are still celebrating assures us that God did not will to give himself partially to mankind, but He gave Himself fully. Jesus' entire divinity was joined to an entire human nature. Man saw Jesus, the Word Incarnate, in His entirety, though plenty of heresies were propagated to the contrary in the first centuries of Christianity. The marvelous character or our salvation lies in this fact: not only did God promise us truth, but truth in it's entirety. Not only did God promise us truth, but He promised us the Spirit of Truth.

The Spirit is not something that we can commune with infallibly on our own. This is not to deny that the Spirit plays an active role in each individual Christian’s life, but we must also realize that contradictory positions both claim the Spirit as their source. Further, this is not to say that God couldn’t have chosen to save us through this exclusively personal relationship with Him: He can do whatever He wants. But the glorious salvation which our Savior has wrought does not consist in this, and we see this simply by noticing that “the Spirit” is invoked as the source and justification of contradictory opinions. Of course the Spirit cannot contradict itself, so one and only one of the parties (perhaps one among thousands) is right. Knowing that it is a slippery slope to go about interpreting scripture and seeking the Spirit on your own (and we don’t even know when we fall in the mud), we must look to something beyond our self, and truly beyond man. If I, a man, am incapable of interpreting scripture infallibly, where does a bunch of guys dressed in red with one in the center in white derive the authority. It is most certainly not from their humanity.

It is rather from the Spirit itself. God, not willing our salvation to be exclusively personal but rather to have the corporate nature of a community established the Church to be the mediator between Himself and mankind, through the Holy Spirit. When we look to find God in and through the Spirit, we are given the wonderful assurance that the Church is spotless in her teachings. To seek the truth elsewhere yields uncertainty and doubt, which are not the effects of the loving and true God, but of a God who distances Himself from His people. But if "God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" He surely loves us enough to give us the entirety of truth, which is found in the Spirit through the Church. This for the simple fact that the Spirit has elevated mankind to such a level as to be the means through which He communicates Himself to others for, "Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world" (St. Theresa).

An Essay Prompt

2010-06-29T08:47:00.002-05:00

This is the first sentence to the essay prompt I was given for English 250, The Novel:

All the novels we have read consider the opposition between logical, scientific liberalism (industrialization/technology) and religious, emotional conservatism (imagination/mythology).

You cannot write the essay without re-writing the prompt! Just obnoxious...

An Essay

2010-05-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

St. Paul the Apostle, upon arriving in Athens as part of his missionary journeys after the Death of Christ remarks, “you Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious”. Paul continues, “For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you” (Acts 17: 19-20, NAB). Paul sees himself as able to satisfy a yearning in the Athenians that they are acutely aware of, but do not know how to satisfy. Because they lacked a solution to the insufficiencies of the world, the Greeks accepted living in a world they rejected because what small fleeting happiness the world could provide was their only hope. This paradoxically two-fold morality is seen in their gods, most prominently in the supreme deity of Zeus, who is both the epitome of law and order, yet is notoriously sexually promiscuous. The Greeks did not conceive of a god in whom law and order existed in totality because they could not accept this burden themselves.
That the Greeks had a keen sense of the misery in human existence is irrefutable. While the philosophy of Antisthenes, Diogenes and others may have escaped popular understanding (Socrates did, and he didn’t embrace living like dogs), the plays of Homer and Herodotus provided a clear-cut rejection of the world in popular form. Homer voices his opinion in stunningly eloquent terms through Achilles in the last book of the Iliad, “no [human] action is without chilling grief” (MLS, 504). The defeated Croesus likewise admits, “that the words of Solon had been spoken under god’s inspiration: ‘No one of the living is happy!’” (MLS, 149, lines 20-21) in Herodotus’ History of the Persian Wars. And yet, the Greeks had no way to end their misery but to die, but even in death misery was present. Achilles’, who is visited in the underworld by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, laments, “I should prefer as a slave to serve another man, even if he had no property and little to live on, than to rule all those dead who have done with life”, (MLS, 141). Life was insufficient, and death was no solution.
The Greeks resorted to awkwardly straddling this philosophical (and emotional) asceticism and worldly indulgence. We see this solution in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle takes a markedly different opinion than Homer and Herodotus on the one hand, in that he claims that happiness is the end of man, thereby positing that it is achievable in the first place. In his search for what happiness consists in, he rigorously debunks the theories of those who believe that happiness can be found in any created good, and yet in the end he concludes, “happiness seems to require this sort of prosperity too [good fortune/luck]” (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b, 7-9, trans. Thomson). It would have been irrational to throw away all things, because whatever form of fleeting happiness man had on earth came from the created goods prosperity provides. While the Greeks knew that a good meal wasn’t going to make you happy (the meal is a means to happiness, not happiness itself), they couldn’t deny the benefits of feeling full rather than hungry. To abandon all things, while it may have been philosophically correct, also took away the promise of any form of happiness. This awkward situation is not seen in Christianity, and consequently Western morality, which has no problem with totality, asking men to abandon all things, and importantly promising that then they might receive all things. The Greeks did not have the promise of receiving, so abandoning all things was irrational.
The totality seen in Christian spirituality is likewise seen in the Christian God. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the very first parts of the Summa, at the beginning of his attempt to outline the Divine Essence proves God’s simplicity, that is, that there are no parts in God (see 1a. 3, especially article 7). In its most obvious application this means that God does not have arms or legs, or any sort of physical being, but more subtly, it also means that God’s various attributes, including love, justice, power, knowledge, etc. are all contained in one higher, incomprehensible principle. While men can act out of justice while neglecting love, God cannot. Rather the two are both simultaneously (and not exhaustively) descriptions of God’s action.
The Greeks did not, and could not have this type of god. Totality was irrational, and they certainly could not have irrational gods. Thus, their gods were multifaceted to accommodate the multi-faceted nature that Greek life of necessity took on. As a result, justice and love could exist separately in the Greek deities. Even more, justice and injustice could exist simultaneously. For a god to be wholly and irrevocably just inculcates man in a similar quest, but the Greeks could not accept this totality. They had to choose between death and the awkwardness of a miserable worldly existence, and did not have that third option of life, both now and eternally which Christianity offers. Zeus then, in compliance with the requirements of Greek philosophy, was put in that same awkward straddle. His upholding of law and order had to be colored with sexual escapades to allow Greek law and order to be colored with the same regrettable though necessary conduct.
Zeus’ paradoxical nature results from the paradoxical nature of Greek life, one that understood the miseries of the created world, and yet had not other options at hand. The Greeks knew a complete rejection of the world to be irrational, and so that accepted the world and its miseries, straddling the ascetic and the worldly. Zeus too is enveloped in this multi-faceted existence.

Happiness and Sacrifice

2010-04-29T20:50:00.001-05:00

Recently I heard two very different nuns criticize a mentality that masquerades itself as Christian. The first was a habit-less Dominican who wondered quite explicitly where we ever got the idea that “if it hurts it’s good”. The second was Mother Mary Francis, the acclaimed author and, by today’s estimation, “radical” Poor Clare nun. Mother Francis had the same sentiments though, despite her life of seemingly extreme penance. We have two nuns who live out religious life in two totally different ways, one living penitently, and the other not, both saying that something isn’t good just because it hurts. What gives?

We must always come back to the fact that Christianity is Love, because God is Love. And while it seems rather cliché to comment on the sacrificial nature of love, it is the core of the subject. But I’m not talking here about radical sacrifices – they are never remotely sacrificial... The sacrifices necessary for love are simple and small, but cut to the core. They are the sorts of sacrifices you feel in your whole body. Any red blooded human can’t help but know exactly what I’m talking about. They are patiently dealing with the walking ashtray that sits next to you in economics. “Patiently dealing with” is even the wrong term. The sacrifice of love is utterly ignoring the fact; being so overwhelmed in the fact that the ashtray is a person that you can love that the very real possibility of asphyxiation can escape your mind. In a speech I gave at my high school graduation I claimed that my classmates loved each other by borrowing (in reality “giving”) a pencil to the same kids every day. It is much easier to deny ourselves food and rest than to continue to pull the pencil out of our pocket day after day knowing it will never come back.

And yet even more than these penances for the sake out outsiders, we have the greatest opportunity to love those we live with. Mother Francis points out that the loss of sleep, lack of food and other material penances are nothing like the penance involved with living in a small convent with 15 other nuns. Imagine it! I live in a house with three stories with 3 other people, each with a well-fortified barricade of computers, TVs and headphones such that no one need ever bother anyone else. You’d never just happen to be in the same room as somebody else. Then consider these nuns. They have a cell which houses a bed, a crucifix, and maybe a desk – that is the only thing that is their own. When they are not in their cell, they are around other nuns. These are not people they have known and loved since birth, or have any remote excuse to have an enjoyable disposition towards. Their fellow nuns are complete strangers: consider how many strangers you meet that you instinctively like, much less would live the rest of your life with. I would find it difficult to live with my own family in such tight quarters, much less live with 15 strangers. By the world’s standards, convents should implode!

It doesn’t, because of love. Love is what holds the convent together. The inconsequential humming of my sister sends me into a rampage, while these nuns vow the rest of their lives to a convent full of clattering rosary beads. The inattentiveness of the families cleaning is sure to frustrate my mom, and yet these nuns, who could surely do a better job themselves, live in a convent cleaned by other nuns. Not only that, but every other chore involved with running a house (cooking, washing, and sewing) is done by somebody else. And the nuns just live with it! They put up with a dirty floor. They put up with cold potatoes. They put up with every annoyance 15 strangers could throw at them. That is the sacrifice that Christianity demands!
These nuns don’t voluntarily accept the spine-tingling pain of clattering rosary beads simply because it hurts! What stupidity! They do it because it gives all the more life! They can love their sister if they put up with the noise. They can embrace the very nature of Christianity if they put up with it. But if they do not, what come of it? Nothing but teeth-gritting and tongue biting! Christian sacrifice is not about hurting yourself, it is about living all the more. These nuns are faced with a choice: either they put up with the annoyances their sisters pose them, or they put up with the pains of a lack of love. They always choose to put up with the annoyances, because the stakes are so high.

Sacrifice is most truly encapsulated in these mundane aspects of life we are inclined to forget, and it necessarily permeates every aspect of life. Up until now the two nuns, the habit-less Dominican and the “strict” Poor Clare have been in perfect agreement, but on this they disagree. The Poor Clare wakes up at midnight to pray Matins, never (ever) eats meat, and voluntarily undertakes countless other penances, where as the Dominican lives a fairly comfortable life by most standards. Is the Poor Clare’s radical life necessary if in the least profitable? Yes, it is both, but every so subtly.

No future-alcoholic begins drinking immoderately, in truth and in self-opinion. Slowly though the distance between the two becomes greater and greater, until he finds himself moderate, but is wildly immoderate. The only hope for him is misery. Misery breaks down the walls of self-opinion we build up and forces us to realize what we truly are. The alcoholic who becomes miserable is truly lucky! He realizes the drinking will never satisfy him, that the more he drinks the less happy he is, and if he were to give it all up happiness would be his. That deserves repeating: the more he drinks, the less happy he is. O, if only we all had a healthy dose of misery to show us the truth! The more we do anything, the less happy we are. The less we do it, the happier we are. The world and happiness are inversely related.

And the reason is quite simple: the more of this world we have, the less we have of Heaven. It’s not that happiness is fleeting because nothing in this life will make us happy. Rather, happiness is found in God. Simply, exclusively, and wholly in God. The greatest evil the devil has promulgated is that Heaven is a distant reality which is inherited in an instant at the time of death. Nope: Heaven is here! Heaven is now! Well, I cannot say that in complete honesty, but that is a far more comfortable extreme than the one we are inclined to fall into. In truth this world can only be a veiled reflection of Heaven, like the Moon is to the Sun. We can gaze at the Moon, but the Sun is too much for our earthly eyes. Either way, do not fall into the trap of thinking that Heaven is anywhere but here. Every moment of the day is an opportunity to win Heaven, and to experience it. And that is why we must sacrifice the world too. Just as sacrificing the annoyances of others lets us love them, sacrificing insignificant pleasures lets us experience Heaven here and now.

On this, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century mystic, we are reminded of this even more: St. Catherine was given the extraordinary grace of not receiving any food but the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death. She was allowed to live Heaven in a far fuller sense than most are. We are always that beginning alcoholic who flirts with immoderation, and only with grave self-reflection can he see himself for what he truly is. But St. Catherine was exempt from those troubles for a time. She was allowed to live wholly on Christ, and that is what we all must strive to do. We should long to live without a dinner and without sleep – we eat and sleep only out of obedience to God who made them necessary. Were we given the slightest indication that we were exempt from these human responsibilities, we’d rejoice! We would be able to live wholly for God, no longer delicately observing the needs of this world while longing for the totality of Heaven.

Now, pay attention to the point of this whole conversation. We didn’t endure any of these sacrifices for any reason but a greater joy. Happiness is the goal, not pain! You’d be insane, not Christian, to think that pain is an acceptable end. Happiness is most assuredly the end, but pain is that unavoidable, but incredibly brief middle step which gets us there. And I don’t claim that we can understand this fully. As with all of Christianity, you have to throw your hands up when you confront the paradoxes and put forward for no reason at all.

A Thesis

2010-04-09T12:46:00.002-05:00

St. Augustine of Hippo, the early Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church wrote in his City of God that, “some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing”, and reports personal knowledge of “a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished” (City of God, XIV, xxiv). According to the Doctor, it was the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, the Original Sin, which has impaired man’s ability to control his own body, and thus only a select few are so “gifted”. In short, prior to the infamous ancestral sin it was natural for all men to be able to act in this way, and what was natural for all men is no longer an attainable act for many of them. Augustine’s major theological counterpart St. Thomas Aquinas defines evil in a related, though not wholly similar way in his Summa Theologica, repeating the teaching of Augustine a century earlier, known as the doctrine of “privatio boni”. The Angelic doctor say, "For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. (Summa, II-I, Q.75, art.1)." Some have seen the doctrine as elaborate theological squirming when the seemingly contradictory doctrines of a God who can do all things but cannot sin, a Good God who created an evil world, a human free will and all-knowing God. The problem of the three O’s as it has been dubbed, namely ‘omnipotence’, ‘omnibenevolence’ and ‘omniscience’, has posed problems for theological abstraction for centuries. Yet, a proper understanding of the nature of evil resolves these mystifying paradoxes.

Holy Water

2010-02-21T16:38:00.003-06:00

Fr. Z over at What Does The Prayer Really Say? has talked extensively about the fallacy of a holy water drought during Lent. The erroneous practice feigns piety: when you walk into a church you are ripped away from your instincts and pushed into the desert which is Lent. What they forget is that holy water is just that, holy.

St. Theresa humorously recounts a story of the devil appearing to her. She made the sign of the cross in front of it, and it disappeared, but reappeared. She repeated the cross, and he disappeared momentarily again. But then she flung some holy water at him, and he disappeared for good.

Not that we have to worry about demonic apparitions... the point is that blessed objects, whatever they may be, are of a spiritual importance over everyday things. Holy water bears the mark of God. We can hardly give up God's blessings during Lent.

We could hardly give up the Eucharist for Lent. The Church, in Her infinite wisdom, takes away The Blessed Eucharist but 3 days a year. How could man survive without this Source of Life! We stand in complete need of God at all times, utterly unable to go at the world by ourselves. Taking away holy water during Lent takes away that very efficacious way of obtaining God's assistance. To remove it during Lent speaks more of our pride and supposed self-sufficiency than our piety.

Waste of a night

2010-02-13T12:32:00.003-06:00

While I was over here a young man came in on the phone:

"I wasn't even drinking... so it was a waste of a night"

--Orate fratres.

An Essay on Morality

2010-02-09T21:54:00.002-06:00

My professor recently asked me if I was "trained by Jesuits". I told him that I was not (unfortunately, I now add). At any rate, without further adu, this is my attempt to contort Nietzsche into Christianity. Having read 10 pages of Nietzsche for the class and not much else on my own time I think "contort" is the most proper word...

St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated in his vast body of work that the pre-Christian philosophy of Aristotle and the philosophical and theological thinking of the Catholic Church can often be seamlessly integrated. However, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche seems to stand in stark contrast to these two beacons of Western thought. Yet, despite many fundamental differences in their philosophies, Nietzsche and Aristotle share a common understanding of virtue which is in harmony with the teachings of the Church.
A cursory study suggests that the three do not even agree on the nature of virtue. For Aristotle, virtue is defined in his Nichomachian Ethics as “a state of deliberate moral purpose consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason”. His definition has three fundamental parts. Firstly, Aristotle’s virtue is determined by reason. Nietzsche acknowledges his belief in a reasoned morality by criticizing Christian morality saying, “after all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the ‘intelligent’ in favor of the ‘poor in spirit.’ How could one expect form it an intelligent war against passion”. Secondly, virtue is a relative mean. Nietzsche applies Aristotle’s principle in his critique: neither the destruction of the passions nor indulgence in them is appropriate. Nietzsche promotes moderation, which is the mean of the passions. Thirdly, virtue is described by Aristotle as a state of character. He goes so far as to claim that “none of man’s functions is so permanent as his virtuous activities”, and he reports that it is even believed by some to outlast knowledge. Virtue is in its first stages “deliberate” and “determined by reason”, but becomes habitual and thoughtless. Nietzsche even more fully agrees that virtue is a state of character claiming that the happy human being “must perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions”. Free will or not the outcome is little different: virtue is an abiding characteristic of man that operates almost thoughtlessly. The two philosophers agree on three major qualities of virtue, namely that it is determined by reason, that it consists in a mean, and that it is a state of character in virtuous men.
The Catholic Church is in agreement also. Jesus seemingly manipulatively proclaims, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments”. Yet, the Church does promulgate laws out of love. God is metaphorically referred to as ‘Father’, and the Church as a mother. Just as parents ask their children to follow their rules simply out of love when all logic fails, God asks his people to do the same. Neither wishes to replace moral inquiry, in fact rules serve as its foundation. Furthermore, the Christian God is the very perfection and essence of reason. His mandates cannot be anything but reasonable, though they may escape the human mind at times. The Church wishes to save Her children from the initial stupidity of the passions which arises from a lack of knowledge, and in so doing preserves their childhood purity. The Church has no desire to suffocate their adult life though, and expects its followers to go beyond the rules, never subverting them, but pursuing them to their essence. Virtuous actions then become true virtue as the individual makes them his own. In reality the Church’s rules serve as a foundation for true virtue.
Nietzsche further criticizes the promises traditional Western morality has made to its followers. He and Aristotle agree that the practice of virtue is fundamental to human life. Nietzsche condemns anti-natural morality as being the enemy of life - natural morality is then the fulfillment of life. He voices this saying, “life itself values through us when we posit values [virtues]”. While Nietzsche cannot say that virtue causes life, instead saying that life causes virtue, the inseparability of the two makes cause and effect secondary. Aristotle arrives at the same conclusion teaching that virtue causes happiness: “happiness is a certain activity of the soul in accordance with virtue”. For both, happiness is the highest good of man, and even the purpose of his life. Furthermore, both men claim that the virtuous man embraces his own humanity, while the vicious man stifles and chokes it. Nietzsche says that he and his followers, “make it a point of honor to be affirmers”, accepting of others. He does not mean that natural morality demands acceptance of non-virtuous actions, because he agrees that morality is a reasonable field, so internal contradiction cannot persist – a man acting one way and a man acting oppositely cannot both be virtuous. Rather, by ‘accepting’ Nietzsche means that virtue accepts who man really is, and not the illusions which vice embraces. Aristotle agrees, teaching that virtue is man’s proper and highest function. Lastly, both thinkers agree that virtue is of intrinsic worth, quite apart from material promises. Nietzsche wrote about morality without stock in Heaven. Rather, the virtuous man is preferable on those terms alone. Aristotle promised happiness as a result of virtue, but virtue is not simply a means to happiness, but the two are inseparable. For example, the student cannot regard learning as an inconsequential step to knowledge, but must pursue it of its own accord if true progress is to be made. Nietzsche and Aristotle agree that virtue is a good in and of itself which is by nature connected to happiness and life.

Jesus promised eternal happiness several times throughout the Gospel. The Church therefore extends the greatest promise man could conceive of in return for, as Nietzsche sees it, submitting to their tyranny. Yet Heaven is in line with the common understanding reached above, as both teach that virtue and happiness are one in the same. The only aspect of the doctrine of Heaven that Nietzsche could consistently disagree with, and he certainly did, is the existence of an eternal afterlife. Heaven for the Church is simply an eternal and perfect enjoyment of the rewards of virtue we get a glimpse of on Earth. Furthermore, the Christian God is Virtue itself, and it is certainly reasonable that the enacting of virtue leads to its source and perfection. It cannot go without saying that heaven being eternal happiness and hell eternal misery is a wildly revolutionary concept that is far more in line with the common understanding of the philosophers treated above than many other heavens. The Christian Heaven is not sought after for its material or sensual pleasures, in fact anybody searching for those pleasures would find a hell in Heaven. This is in stark contrast to heavens where virtue leads not to the happiness Aristotle describes in detail, but a happiness based on material possession. The Christian Heaven is radically philosophical. But do those who inherit heaven merit it? Is it not liable that non-virtuous men will simply act virtuously without allowing it to become their character, in the interests of ‘meriting’ college? In reality that is an attempt to ‘trick’ God, which cannot occur. Instead the Church teaches a God who judges the heart. It is clear that the Church’s Heaven is philosophically in line with Nietzsche and Aristotle’s common understanding.
The weight of Nietzsche’s argumentation relies on the fact that the Church and all of Western philosophy has preached a false morality. To equate his ideas with his adversaries seems to be in direct contradiction to what he actually says, yet, when one analyzes Nietzsche’s critiques of false morality, one realizes that traditional Aristotelian morality does not subscribe to Nietzsche’s doctrine of anti-life morality. Nietzsche says that false morality operates by, “destroying the passions and cravings”, and in turn this destruction of the passions destroys life. Aristotle retorts, “man’s good would seem to lie in the function of man”, and virtue is this function and consists in man embracing himself and his very nature. Aristotle’s virtue stems from a self-reflective man who understands himself, an idea he borrowed from ancient Greeks a hundred years before him who coined the aphorism, “know thyself”. Understanding this aspect of Aristotle’s virtue also puts to rest Nietzsche’s claim that the false morality promulgated by the West is a morality that forces man to change himself. For Aristotle, and those who posit a free will, a vicious man who chooses to act virtuously will certainly have to change his actions, but on a far more significant level he is not changing himself, rather he is becoming more fully who he is. In denying a free will Nietzsche doesn’t allow discussions of such a choice, but even then he can only fault moral promulgators for wasting their breath on those who are irreversibly not inclined to virtue. But perhaps Nietzsche’s most compelling critique of Western morality is that it is based on feelings. This strikes to the very core of morality, denying it the essential nature of rationality which was essential to commencing discussion of virtue to begin with. Yet we see that Aristotle’s virtue is final in nature, and is not subject to the ancient wheel of fortune. Rather, happiness is a quality of the soul which exists apart from the temporal world. Nietzsche’s critiques illustrate true problems with morality, though he reveals a misunderstanding of Western morality, and his critiques are not applicable to it. These critiques of false morality are understood and avoided by Aristotle.
To begin addressing the Church’s morality, one must consider its remarkably high opinion of mankind. First, it claims that Jesus was both truly God and truly man. Logistics aside, to claim that these two natures are compatible is revolutionary. Secondly, the Church teaches that the man himself goes to heaven; it is not his soul, or a perfectly recreated body, but the same body which inhabited earth. If the Church thought that something other than the man himself went to heaven, we would have reason to doubt if virtue was in fact a self-embracing, but everlasting virtue, that is heaven, is inhabited by men – the two are compatible. The Church does not preach a morality which seeks to deny men themselves, or to change his nature but rather it teaches that his nature is fit for God – to neglect or even misrepresent such a nature would be the most unfortunate heresy. And lastly, the Church teaches that God is eternal. It follows that embracing him is not something based on passing trends or feelings, since he is not properly found in those, but outside of them in a timeless eternity. Theology seeks to understand timeless truths with a time-bound intellect, and is therefore subject to errors. But the theological truths which the Church proclaims as true cannot, on account of their veracity, be time-bound, and certainly could not vacillate with the frequency of feelings. The Church’s morality free from Nietzsche’s critiques when one considers its exalted status of man and eternal God.
Nietzsche, Aristotle and The Catholic Church are in agreement concerning virtue, despite the very real differences in their understanding of the Universe. While Nietzsche explicitly attacks the other two, his attacks are improperly applied, despite being valid ideas in and of themselves. In reality neither’s understanding of morality falls victim to the falsities which Nietzsche condemns, in fact each embraces his teachings.

Week End Observations

2010-02-06T21:30:00.003-06:00

Don't you hate it when you take the time (10 hours) to delicately show how Aristotle, Nietzsche and The Catholic Church share common ground in their understanding of virtue (you no doubt understand the need for delicacy), and you find yourself having to pinch words to make 2,400 words into 1,600?

Isn't it odd that I had a pulled pork sandwich, chicken wings, rice and beans and potatoes in celebration of black history month? We've gone full circle... And who knew that shredded squid is a sort of beef jerky in China and that soy milk was preferred?

Nietzche - Morality and The Church

2010-02-02T20:25:00.002-06:00

I once read Nietzche in Adoration on a Saturday afternoon for 2 or 3 hours. I wouldn't do that now (understanding Adoration as I do...), but of all the places to read Nietzche I happened upon a good one. I have fallen on less fertile soil these days (the Red Cardigan Society was denied, multiple times, it's request for Eucharistic Adoration at the Newman Center. We are searching elsewhere.) But I got a bit of a handle on Nietzche back then, and it's paying off now, as I read him in my English class: Nietzche gets the first principles wrong, and everything else right.

He claims that morality inhibits men from the proper exercise of their passions. In modern times you might find somebody who claims that morality which prohibits kids (by nature of being unmarried...) from having sex doesn't allow them to become fully developed. And if that is your view of morality, then you get a miserable Church which has come up with a bunch of rules in order to have power over it's followers. The logic is impecible.

But what if you change the first principle. What if you change the definition of morality. Let's take Aristotle instead: he'd say that morality guides men to happiness, since happiness is attained by being virtuous. Morality becomes life, because happiness is the greatest good of life. So what does the Church look like then? It becomes a loving institution which, in the self-forgeting interest of its followers provides them with a path (in the form of "rules") to happiness. They become the interperators of nature - of how happiness is achieved!

It's a debate between definitions when you are talking about Nietzche.

Aristotle

2010-01-31T16:58:00.002-06:00

"By nature, all men long to know".

What a way to start a book...

And look at this bold statement, all you young "who needs liberal arts" fools:

For when several skills had been discovered, some having to do with necessity and some with indulgence, it is reasonable that the ractitioners of the latter were always more admired than those of the former because of the uselessness of their knowledge.

God is so good to us: He gave us Aristotle!

An Essay on The Ethics of Sex

2010-01-26T20:24:00.003-06:00

My English assignment was to write about an ethical situation I recently encountered. I'm not very happy with this dense style I write in, but hopefully thats the reason I'm in English -I'm optimistic at this stage.

Some would say that sex is constantly on the minds of today’s young people, but it was in the context of the wellness class I took during winterim, rather than my free time, that I was compelled to consider the subject. The class’ text stated, “[Many young people today] go out in groups rather than strictly as couples, and each person pays his or her way. A man and woman may begin to spend more time together, but often in the group context. If sexual involvement develops, it is more likely to be based on friendship, respect, and common interests than on expectations related to gender roles. In this model, mate selection may progress from getting together to living together to marrying." Finding dating advice in a university textbook caught my attention, and it’s bold contradiction with the Judeo-Christian ideologies that I am indebted to forced me to solidify and justify my own understanding of the subject.
It would seem that most boys my age use their feelings and impulses as their guide in sexual matters. Yet feeling like something is right or really wanting to do it has never proved an entirely satiating reason for action. Many others use the Judeo-Christian prescription to avoid sex until marriage as their guide. I certainly fall into this group, though, as we believe in a reasonable, logical God, we know that His commandments cannot be irrational. Knowing that the 6th commandment had logic behind it, and that it was not an ethical consideration to be taken on face value, it became my job to figure out the logical explanation behind this moral precept.
I began with the assumption that sex serves three purposes, namely that of procreation, unification and pleasure. That sex serves a purpose is vitally important because it allows one to judge sexual actions with respect to an ideal, because an action ideally satisfies its intent perfectly. By way of example, food serves the purpose of nourishment, comradery and pleasure. There is a proper mean for each one of these purposes. As regards to nourishment, bulimics deny food its nourishing purpose, and we say that they have a mental illness. Oppositely, those who excessively indulge in food are harmed by food’s nourishment by way of obesity. We consider this gluttony a vice, and see obesity as undesirable. The mean here is to eat a balanced diet. All of the other purposes of food have similar means to it, as do the purposes of sex.
It was in this context that I evaluated my text’s statement. The text claimed that sexual intimacy could rightly spring out of friendship, yet this harms sex’s procreative purpose by placing children in the hands of a couple who are unprepared and often unwilling to care for the child. Many young people avoid this problem through contraception, but this even more directly denies sex its procreative purpose. I could not accept the text’s unreasonable understanding, and instead searched for the mean, which I believe can be found in a couple which is properly prepared and desirous to raise children. Secondly, the text claimed that friendship, respect and common interests were sufficient criteria in choosing a sexual partner. Yet people involved in daily life will have many relationships that fit these criteria. To have sex with somebody with whom you do not have a specific relationship denies sex its unifying purpose. Lastly, sex serves the purpose of pleasure. At first glance it seems that today’s youth who follow my text’s advise hardly have a problem with acknowledging this purpose of sex. Consider if some men granted a slab of roast beef the same attention they give sex. They would be looked at curiously, to say the least. Treating the pleasures of sex with the same reverence and attention we treat good tasting food is appropriate here – we’d eat whether it tasted good or not, but were none the less thankful when food tastes good. Eating food simply because it tasted good, and therefore not eating bad tasting food, would be physically harmful. I came to the conclusion that the text was wholly wrong in its opinion on sex for these three reasons.
Because we consider sex a matter of morality and ethics, an incorrect understanding can be called an immoral or unethical one. My line of reasoning led me to understand that to have sex in this way is immoral and unethical in nature. Rather, the only reasonable and ethical path for me to take is that of the one Judeo-Christian values have laid out.

Wise guy, eh?

2010-01-24T17:28:00.002-06:00

As we are driving down a street with a lot of college kids living on it, my sister pulls out her iPod Touch and checks for a WiFi connection. Several come up, including the connection "davidswangislittle".

Mary, Seat of Wisdom; pray for us!

When Kids Open Their Mouth

2010-01-22T14:34:00.002-06:00

College is far more effective at teaching you philosophies than giving you knowledge. Every class you enter has an ideological bend to it. Heck, it's probably in the title of the class: "wellness studies" and "modern social problems" are the only two I've encountered so far. The word wellness has a whole ideology behind it, and to say that social problems are modern claims that the problems Western Civilization has dealt with for thousands of years are no longer pertain, that the ideologies of today which have not taken full root in society are really evidence of a problem, rather than the entirely made up hopes and dreams that they are. But it's not just the classes that inundate unsuspecting college freshmen with ideologies, it is the students too. I like my solitude when I'm on campus - there are times that at 4pm I realize I haven't opened my mouth aside from saying the mass responses and maybe answering a question in a class. I wouldn't have it any other way, and I am further encouraged to hold fast to my contemplative existence when I do hear kids open their mouth.

My dad always told me that it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought foolish, than to open it and leave no doubt. If there is one thing college kids know how to do, its how to socialize, and this practical tip has not alluded them. For this reason, they have come up with some code words to see if the person they are talking to is friendly to their ideology. Perhaps some translation will illuminate the way: Asking "what did you do this weekend?" is a clear invitation to recount your partying exploits. The non-drinker is obliged to respond with the bore-butt things he did, for example, "well, I read St. Theresa in the deserted library on Friday night, and did my homework in a deserted library Saturday morning, and made soup and bread in a deserted kitchen on Sunday" clearly signals that you are uninterested in drinking. The initiator of the conversation then saves himself the embarrassment of recounting his exploits and follies to you.

It is entirely appropriate to display your liberal social doctrine openly and no code words are needed to disguise such leanings. But for the conservatives out there, be warned, you must now adopt the code words. It's not as if you really care to be friends with the liberals, but it's a matter of courtesy, lest you offend their subtle dispositions. You must always only hint at conservative doctrines. Perhaps say "well, maybe Plato thinks that there is a truth which isn't socially defined". Take note, you say "maybe" to allow them to spend the next 15 minutes reinforcing their Durkheimian BS, and you also put the blame on Plato. If you need to remain on friendly terms with this person, you can quickly add "but he lived 3000 years ago. Things are different now" when you see their nostrils change shape.

In both of these scenarios, it is crucial that you do not place any confidence in your companion - it is when college students really start to open up to you that it becomes frighting. I think I better let them speak for themselves:

We need to find ways to experience things [drug use, heavy drinking, unsafe sex...] safely. - April

This is a subtle one, but oh so pervasive. College students think that they can have their cake and eat it too. They think that they can party and maintain their respect. That is why one must be so cautious when dealing with people you just met: you could reveal yourself to be who you truly are, and that is usually a pretty ugly image. No, it is best to lie to yourself and don't let any sort of thinking individuals learn enough about you to dispel that. They think that they can party without consequences. They have a wildly innovative way to accomplish this one: you make all the consequences into desirable things. This is why college age kids are so obsessed with destruction. You are "hammered" on Friday night, and you are "fucked" on Saturday morning, and you repeat it again, so that on Monday morning you are "screwed". But these aren't bad things. "Man, I'm screwed" is said with a snicker, and heard with a laugh. "I was hammered" is said with only a trace of self-remorse, and heard with curiosity. It is an entirely desirable thing to be "hammered", "fucked" and "screwed", and your friends are only going to support you along the way. After taking the same "wellness" class I took, April was forced to realize that drugs, sex and whatever else the kids do these days is bad for you. She couldn't cloud it in their escapist language anymore, so she went back to square one: how do we live without consequences?

I was surprised when I read that "at current rates, half of all young people [in the U.S.] will acquire an STD by age 25." Those rates are huge, and even though it would be a little exaggerated, I think, to say that every other person we sleep with will have an STD, it's still something to imagine so that we remember to use condoms and practice other methods of safe sex. - Jason

I find this fallacy most frighting: the sorts of kids who don't even bother to disguise the consequences, but try to conquer them. It's almost humorous in Jason's example: so your on the bed, ready to have sex with a gal, ready to make two bodies one, ready to make an unbreakable bond with her, and the thought crosses your mind "well, maybe she's got an STD?". Maybe she is just as promiscuous as I am? Maybe this means as little to her as it does to me! So what do you do? Do you tell the chick that you gotta put on a condom. No doubt she'll reply "I'm on the pill", and then you have to tell her that you have suspicion shes the town bicycle. Doesn't that offend a girl? Doesn't that make her think "if he thinks every other girl he sleeps with has an STD, what kind of girls does he sleep with?" That goes beyond having two or three serious girlfriends and leaves no doubt that he likes sex, not you.

The drugs and alcohol self-quiz was a good one for me to assess myself. I found that I have a strong likelihood of hazardous or harmful alcohol consumption. College is definitely a reason this score is so high; also, I just turned 21 a few months ago, so I’m still just enjoying being 21. I know drinking isn’t good for many reasons; however, after college, I will have to be serious for the rest of my life, so I figure I might as well have fun while I still can.

And lastly, when finding a way to make the problem desirable doesn't work, and you can't just forget about your stupidity, blame it on "college". You see kids walking around with shirts that just have that word on it, as if the word itself is an ideology, just like "wellness" and "modern". She doesn't blame her foolish actions on herself, she blames them on college, being of age and, the whopper of all college falsities, the idea that she'll live a boring life. I played 2 sets at the Dakota Jazz Club, and now I'm studying to be an insurance actuary: that is an example of going on to live a boring life. Most college age kids have been drinking since the 10th grade, and after a high school and college of drinking think that they are going to stop the day the graduate. It doesn't happen like that! You are the person you are: you are a drinker. But the number of kids who think that truth exists can be weeded out by saying "what did you do this weekend?", and then you'll never have to know.

Etymology

2010-01-20T11:42:00.004-06:00

Etymology is really more fascinating than I give it credit for:

syphilis - 1718, Mod.L., originally from the title of a poem, "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus" "Syphilis, or the French Disease," 1530, by Veronese doctor Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553), which tells the tale of the shepherd Syphilus, supposed to be the first sufferer from the disease. Fracastoro first used the word as a generic term for the disease in 1546 treatise "De Contagione." Why he chose the name is unknown; it may be intended as L. for "Pig-lover," though there was also a Sipylus, a son of Niobe, in Ovid.

Nows The Time

2010-01-20T10:53:00.004-06:00

I love that time in a class where you can start to insert snarky lines in your lines in your assignments because your going to get an A even if you don't turn the assignment in, you don't care about the course material, and the teacher knows that the material is hardly worthy of being taken seriously. Today I had to write about the various ways in which addiction affects the wellness dimensions. My treatment of the ways in which drug addiction harms "environmental wellness":

And lastly, environmental wellness is damaged because the addict is likely to drive great distances in order to satisfy his addiction, causing large amounts of fossil fuels to be burnt, to the detriment of the Earth. Furthermore, his stupored state causes him to be wholly uninterested in planting trees, offsetting his carbon foot print, or eliminating trays from the cafeteria, all but negating his positive contributes the environment.

In celebration of liberal stupidity, lets preserve a truly endangered Bird! I'm glad bass solos have become more sophisticated over the years...

Recomended Movies for Health Class

2010-01-11T14:12:00.002-06:00

Back in high school we'd watch really cool movies, because I had really cool teachers.

In college we watch really stupid movies, because I have really stupid teachers.

The recommended viewing list for UWEC Health Class includes SICKO - Michael Moore and An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore. Aside from the fact that being sick is a necessary prerequisite for socialized health care, and the fact that breathing poluted air can cause respiratory problems, how do these movies even remotely relate to the class?

I'm inclined to think they only relate to the professors liberal agenda!

And I Quote

2010-01-04T12:34:00.002-06:00

"To enjoy spiritual wellness is to possess a set of guiding beliefs, principles, or values that give meaning and purpose to your life, especially in difficult times. The spiritually well person focuses on the positive aspects of life and finds spirituality to be an antidote for negative feelings such as cynicism, anger, and pessimism."

-'Fit and Well' - Fahey et all.

If they only knew!

God and Math

2009-12-30T17:46:00.002-06:00

A while ago I challenged a friend to a math duel. The rules: we send original proofs back and forth, each trying to refute the other's, and at the end of the school year present them to our former math teacher, who will judge which is the 'coolest' proof and also the 'most impressive'. For the opening proof I went big:

Prove Euclid's definition of a point: 'that which has no part'.

I'll save you the infinite series notations, and explain this in a pseudo-philosophic way. Take a line segment, from 0 to 1. Now remove the middle third, inclusively, such that you have two line segments, from 0 to 1/3, and 2/3 to 1, including all end points. Now remove the middle third of those two, and keep doing that infinitely. Lets define the term "length" to mean the total "unremoved" portions, so at the beginning it is 1, then 2/3, and next 4/9. (This is called the 'Cantor Set', after a certain Georg Cantor, who did a lot of work with infinity, and such). The length becomes infinitely smaller, until it reaches 0 (this can be proven with an infinite series). Yet there are also an infinite number of points, since the end points can never be in the middle third, thus 0, 1/3, 2/3, and 1 are four of the infinitely many end points. This means that there is infinitely many points within 0 and 1, but infinitely little length. Therefore, a point has no part.

I thought that was cool enough, but then I encountered another Greek, Zeno of Elea. He cleverly pointed out that if a point has no part, no matter how many of them you stick together you will never get anything of substance (a line). So in the first place we have proven mathematically that a point does not have any length, yet that means that infinitely many points of no length somehow constitute length.

And people say there is not a God?

Mahler Symphony No. 2 - Text

2009-12-29T17:15:00.001-06:00

Mvt. IV

Primeval Light (Urlicht)
O red rosebud!
Man lies in deepest need!
Man lies in deepest pain!
Oh how I would rather be in heaven.
There, I came upon a broad path;
There, came a little angel and wanted to send me away.
Ah no! I would not let myself be sent away!
I am from God and want to return to God!
The loving God will give me a little light,
Which will light me into that eternal blissful life!

Mvt. V

Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you My dust,
After a brief rest!
Immortal life! Immortal life
Will He who called you, give you.
To bloom again were you sown!
The Lord of the harvest goes
And gathers in, like sheaves,
Us together, who died.
O believe, my heart, O believe:
Nothing to you is lost!
Yours is, yes yours, is what you desired
Yours, what you have loved
What you have fought for!
O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!
What was created
Must perish,
What perished, rise again!
Cease from trembling!
Prepare yourself to live!
O Pain, You piercer of all things,
From you, I have been wrested!
O Death, You masterer of all things,
Now, are you conquered!
With wings which I have won for myself,
In love’s fierce striving,
I shall soar upwards
To the light which no eye has penetrated!
Its wing that I won is expanded,
and I fly up.
Die shall I in order to live.
Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you, my heart, in an instant!
That for which you suffered,
To God will it lead you!

On The Eucharist

2009-11-23T20:27:00.003-06:00

Every now and then I wish I was a parish priest. This never occurs out of any reasonable desire for such a life, but mostly because I with the parish priests we do have were better at their jobs, a job which I as a layman am incapable of fulfilling.

Understanding that, if I were a parish priest next Sunday's homily would be on the Eucharist. It's relevant for a few reasons: one, it means thanksgiving, and my parishioners would be fresh off their Thanksgiving festivities, likely to enjoy left over turkey after mass. Such a topic is a sermon on it's own, but more to the point, I'd address what's going on in Rhode Island, with our pro-abortion supposedly-Catholic Congressman Patrick Kennedy. If you haven't heard, here's the long and short of it: Bishop Tobin reminded Congressman Kennedy that his pro-abortion stance is in fundamental disagreement with the Church's teachings. Kennedy said "that doesn't make me any less Catholic"; Bp. Tobin said "well, actually it does... being Catholic means you assent to Catholic teaching. Because of this, it isn't proper for you to receive the Eucharist".

So today I went to the dreaded (unfortunately!) Newman Center, giving it one last chance to redeem itself by presenting Church history in a positive light, or impressing the necessity of the sacraments, or faithfully teaching Church teaching. Unfortunately I was let down on all three fronts. What got me most worked up was the comment "I have largely ignored the Bishops and The Pope. I have no time for anybody who is going to say that you cannot receive The Eucharist".

I have no doubt that this gentleman speaks out of an understanding of the love and community of The Church, which is a fundamental message of the Gospel, no doubt. I don't think he is as much of a schismatic as he professes, I think he's just uneducated. And furthermore I think the majority of Catholics are just like him; the majority of non-Catholics no doubt simply do not understand the Church. So as a parish priest I would rectify the situation.

See, The Eucharist is The Body of Jesus. That is central to the whole thing. He said "this is my body", and that explains it quite well... that fact, as you might have guessed, has some implications, to put it mildly. Firstly, The Eucharist ought to be treated with extreme reverence: its God after all. I would encourage my parishioners to receive the Eucharist on the tongue, rather than holding Jesus in their hands. It's curious that we will use a fork so that our mashed potatoes and gravy doesn't touch our hands, but we won't take a simple measure to avoid The Eucharist touching our hands. But more to the point, the individual receiving The Eucharist must be in a state to do so! It's not as if we can ever merit receiving Jesus, or merit anything he did for us, or merit the fact that he existed at all, but what we can do is at least show a little respect.

Perhaps a whimsical example would illustrate the situation: imagine a average looking high school nerd right around prom time. By some miraculous event he ends up going to the prom with the best looking (read "most modest"), nicest (read "most Christian") gal in the school! In preparing for the prom he surely realizes that he is not worthy of such a wonderful date, nor is anything he does in the duration of the night going to earn him any merit, so is he going to show up in jeans, without having showered? No! He's going to dress himself up nice, clean his car and use a spray of cologne! That's what the Eucharist is like! It's not as if you are ever going to impress upon God the necessity of him giving you Jesus; he gives it to you out of love, just like the girl goes with the boy out of love, not out of any self-interest.

Make sure that you are in a worthy state to receive, lest you offend the God who so lovingly gave himself to you. Bp. Tobin isn't being a jerk; he's actually being all the more loving: he doesn't want Congressman Kennedy to have the grave sin of a sinful communion on his soul! And it truly would be sinful, lest we believe that The Church does not express the will of God in it's teachings, at which point you're really unprepared to receive the Eucharist anyways.

Recently I convinced an (now former!) nonpracticing Catholic to being going to Sunday mass with me. Unfortunately he did not go to Confession before. Now, time comes around to receive the Eucharist, and he gets in line! I said "wait! Did you go to confession?" and he said "No..." with a mostly-confused, slightly-angered look on his face. Thanks be to God he did not receive the Eucharist, and he later thanked me for reminding him. But what's going on! I haven't been Catholic for a whole year yet, and somehow these kids who were raised in The Church aren't aware, or at least it's not a pressing issue, that they need to be free of mortal sin, as a bare minimum, to receive the Eucharist? I'm proud to report that he went to confession for the first time in 5 years and became the second person I have had a meal with at Eau Claire who is in full standing with the Roman Catholic Church! He confessed to 82 year old, nearly miniature, Monsignor Klimick, who, so the penitent reported, dropped his Bible when he reported that it had been 5 years since his last confession. I made sure to find an extra loving priest for his return confession, and aside from his slippery fingers, I'm sure Monsignor Klimick fit the bill: the crusty priests are the real softies.

Hopefully you could walk away from mass understanding why it is that The Eucharist is not fit for reception by anybody who is not in full communion with The Church. It's not an elite club, and it's not a superiority thing: it's an issue of gratitude for what you are doing, and ultimately the Church hierarchy is only interested in protecting it's members, and it's non-members, from grave sin, nothing more, nothing less. Like everything else in life, you have to do a little work to reap the rewards of The Eucharist, and what a reward it is!

UGH!

2009-11-21T19:43:00.004-06:00

How could any young Catholic boy not feel like they're missing out on something getting married?

Would you have some decency please!

2009-11-12T20:57:00.002-06:00

ORA PRO NOBIS, SANCTO AUGUSTINUS HIPPONENSIS!

So last night I showed up to what I thought was going to be a rather innocent residence hall association meeting, only to soon learn that the next activity set for planning is "Sex in the Dark". Initially I figured "can't (and surely don't) people have sex in the dark on their own accord... what do we have to plan this for." I found out soon enough that the idea is to gather in a hall basement, turn off the lights so that nobody can see each other, and ask "experts" (anonymously, read without consequence) questions about sex. I quote experts, because I doubt anything real like this, or even this will come up (by the way, isn't New Advent the best thing since sliced bread? I verified this humorous bit on just that website today).

BEATUS VIR QUI NON ABIIT IN CONSILIO IMPIORUM

ET IN VIA PECCATORUM NON STETIS

IN CATHEDRA DERISORUM NON SEDIT!!

After the meeting I went to get my now-traditional ice cream cone (a tradition that may soon be stopping, due to the weather) when I ran into some people I knew. I have come to quite enjoy eating by myself, because I don't really enjoy the conversations that occur, and, unlike high school, where I suffered the same thing, it is quite possible to live your whole college life talking to nobody, with anybody caring to disrupt that situation. But alas, sometimes you get wrapped into it, and I didn't have the conviction to decline their offers. Once again I was sorely disappointed as one gentleman, and I use that term extremely loosely, went on to discuss his sex life, quoting his girlfriend as saying "well, if we got the parts we mind as well use them". He further dismayed me by "assuring" me that they rolled out of bed and went to mass together the next morning, where the priest, in hopes of preventing the swine flu, promoted a fist bump approach to the sign of peace, right before the sinful couple was going to frivolously receive the Eucharist.

MEMORARE, O PIISIMA VIRGO MARIA!

So, I was pretty well disgusted with it all when, much to my dismay, I walked past the pro-choice club meeting today. Now, I don't mean to disparage their existence, because, while they are misguided and wrong, that doesn't negate their right to have a club, in the same way that it wouldn't be right to deny advocates of another Jewish Holocaust the right to organize (right?). But it was their sign that set me off. I should point out that groups usually don't have signs, much less a larger piece of presentation board with condoms all over it. Now, please tell me, what does the pro-choice movement even stand for now? It used to be, "this poor woman was raped, she should not have to give birth to the resulting kid", which is a tragic circumstance indeed, and it is at least understandable how a misguided person, poorly trained in ethics (and it's difficulties) might have lapsed.

DOMINE DEUS MEUS IN TE SPERAVI

SALVA ME AB OMNIBUS PERSEQUENTIBUS ME

ET LIBERA ME!

But it's just sex all the time now! Sex, sex, sex! Lets have sex without consequence (good or bad I might add)! Lets have sex without cares (for ourselves our the person we "love", if we are even that noble)! Lets have sex for no reason at all! If you got the parts, you mind as well use them, right?

AUDITORIUM NOSTRUM IN NOMINE DOMINI

QUI FECIT CAELUM ET TERRAM!

College

2009-11-12T07:02:00.003-06:00

Rapture

2009-10-28T12:42:00.004-05:00

As you know, I'm reading St. Theresa of late. I couldn't help but laughing today. After treating 4 stages of prayer she treats rapture. She says offhandedly: "sometimes my whole body has been affected, to the point of being raised up from the ground," and continues "but once, when we were together in choir, and I was on my knees and about to communicate, it caused me the greatest distress. It seemed to me a most extraordinary thing [no kidding...] and I thought there would be a great deal of talk about it [understandable]; so I ordered the nuns not to speak of it. On other occasions, when I have felt that the Lord was going to enrapture me (once it happened during a sermon, on our paternal festival, when some great ladies were present), I have lain on the ground and the sisters have come and held me down, but none the less the rapture has been observed.

I didn't think I'd ever be provoked to laughter reading about rapture, but God is just too weird to let anything he does be normal.

P(Contemplative) ^ P(Healthy) = .98

2009-10-22T18:42:00.005-05:00

Lately I've been pondering all sorts of ways I could become rich and famous using statistics.

My first idea was to become the actuary of the monasteries. I have no idea how monasteries handle their health care needs, but I could do a monster survey, taking into account everything that is cool about all the different types of monks (contemplative/active, eat meat/don't eat meat, sleep/don't sleep, wear the habit/don't wear the habit) and statistically determine how much money these monasteries ought to save for health care expenses! Unfortunately I don't think monasteries are looking for elaborate mathematics to ensure health... they're too cool to care about such things.

But then I figured that I could write a news column. Everybody loves a witty news column right? Each week I would go out on the streets with a tape recorder, and ease-drop on people's conversations, and later record different aspects of their speech. For instance, while sitting at the lunch table I often hear about the excessive drinking habits of the friends of those sitting around me. I would mathematically show (to put some teeth behind the decidedly light commentary) that students here are more likely to use the word "fucked up" or "trashed" to describe an inebriated friend than simply "drunk". Of course I'd have to insert a good quantity of wit into the whole thing, but I would show how it is that these students seem to be enamored with destruction and ruin. Perhaps the surprisingly well-written and well-balanced newspaper on campus will have more interest in me than the Carmelites.

Unfortunately I didn't come up with this idea, but another genius did: over at CentSports.com they give you 10 cents for signing up to their sports gambling website. You get the 10 cents completely free, and when you get $20 you can cash out your money. The idea is genius when you consider the math involved (the study of risks: actuarial science!). See, the 10 cents doesn't actually exist. The company could have absolutely no money in their bank account when they started, and give out 10 cents to the whole world. It's only by time that the user multiplies his money 200 times that he can get a single cent out of the company. How prone is the company to a freak sports event? How many clicks (advertising money) does it take to win your $20? How many users will stop using the website after a while, turning their clicks into pure profit? The math behind this would be wonderful!

Party Sufferings!

2009-10-12T19:27:00.004-05:00

So I've been reading St. Theresa's "Life" in the library recently. I don't know why, but it seems so romantic to me to go into the library every time I want to read the book, and go to the section BX, second stack in, second shelf from the bottom, and select the book. I re-read her chapter treating the beginning prayer life today. She was discussing how it is that beginners are anxious about their prayers and agonize over their spiritual progress, rather than commending yourself to God. She also touched on sufferings, and how it is that the Lord sees fit to give us sufferings, but that we must patiently endure them, because he loves us, and how could we doubt that in his infinite love and wisdom he isn't always bringing us closer to him, even if it doesn't feel good.

It was the sort of reading that easily starts to fly over your head, not because of it's wild complexity, like St. Thomas, but because of it's wild simplicity. Now, on my way to the library I saw in a field a large snow penis. It's not uncommon to see artistic renderings of the twig and berries here on campus. About a week ago several large rocks were assembled to the effect that all those walking over the river bridge were gifted with the sight of the larger-than-life one-eyed trousersnake. So, while I'm reading about prayer, and how great God is, and thanking him for all the wonderful sufferings he gives me, and asking him if just maybe he'd let me be a Carmelite because all my experience with the Carmelites, including Theresa, tells me that they are really cool, and I'd like to suffer the rest of my life, only to gain my reward at death; all I could think about was plowing through this penis. It's been some time since I've played football, but I've been watching football on TV on Sundays (as part of my commitment to myself to spend 2 hours a week being simply lazy) and I had in my mind a rushing defensive end, having shoved his blocker aside, who is running at the quarterback. The unsuspecting passer has his back turned to the warrior, and, when he least expects it, he is nailed in the back, torn down like a gazelle on the Serengetie. Alas, Theresa dedicated some time to the distractions which come in prayer when you are attached to this world.

So I did it. I walked out of the library and the bell tower rang 7pm. I knew it was meant to be, for after all, who can say that they ran into a snow penis at 7pm on October the Twelfth, in the Year of Our Lord 2009! God truly blesses his children! I advanced towards the snow creation, and when I was about 100 feet away I broke into a run. I had some pro-life literature with me, so it was decided early on that I should transfer that from my right arm to my left arm. Completing the transfer I put out my right arm, in preparation for the splitting blow. I lowered my shoulder, and pow! The penis broke in two!

I then immediately thought of St. Therese of the Little Flower, who, when she was caught being noisy simply ran away! She stood on the top of the stairs proclaiming victory over her desire to defend herself, even though she was most guilty. Of course I wasn't guilty of anything. Sure, there were plenty of giggling girls who were photographing the penis who would be disappointed when they saw the decimation. And sure, I was inflicting my anti-penis sculpture values on the rest of the campus. But it was so worth it. So I ran away like a little child until I rounded the corner.

So, I implore you: accept the sufferings of the Lord most humbly. Perhaps he will give you a pain, or keep you up all night unable to sleep, or let everybody be wholly indifferent to you so that your vanity has no fields to sow itself in! Or best yet, maybe he'll inflict you with the misuse of His Name, and the Blessed Name of His Son all day! And this world doesn't even compare. As wonderful as it was to slam into the snow penis, that strikes me as utterly boring compared to the wonders of Heaven.

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, True God and True Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus. Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His Most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Blessed be the Great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy.
Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the Name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most Chaste Spouse.
Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints.

Snow!

2009-10-10T10:20:00.003-05:00

I woke up to snow this morning! Cardigan season is finally here!

I hope the "Party for Trees" fails because nobody loves their trees enough to freeze for them.

Perhaps Hickory Tate will be there? He was on the front page of the school newspaper for holding a picnic in honor of the Council Oak, which, thanks to our mother the earth, will not be removed.

Abecedarius Rex wrote about manliness recently (and here also, I suppose). Now, a certain Gunnar Andreen came to talk about sustainability as a source of business profit a few days ago. My accounting teacher announced the event several times, and I could just tell that he wanted to say "gunner", as in one who shoots a gun, but he forced himself to say "goon-er", as in one who is a goon. Perhaps I'm way off the mark, but is sustainability (and cultural sensitivity) making men like my accounting teacher and Hickory Tate sissies? Would we have put a gun in Mr. Andreen's name 50 years ago?

A New Word

2009-10-10T10:02:00.003-05:00

I learnt the word "isogloss" on Friday. It is an imaginary line on a map which distinguishes between two different uses for the same word. The Atlantic Ocean (or even "the pond") is a huge isogloss. We wear our boots and bonnets, they pop them (meaning trunk and hood of a car repectively). We fish in our ponds. Over there to "knock somebody up" is to wake them up from sleeping. A more local example: those in Eastern Wisconsin almost universally use the word "water fountain" to describe a fountain from which you drink from. Those in Western Wisconsin (and Minnesota, I can attest) use the word "water fountain" to mean an outdoor statue which spurts water. Of course we understand the usage of the two words, but, at least using my class as evidence, it's an actual phenomenon. I also learned that the folks in Eastern Wisconsin call outdoor watery statues "bubblers".

Which brings me to another thing I learnt: the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis says that you are only as smart as the words you know (anyone else find my crude definition ironic? I digress). As an example, if the theory holds true, not having a word for the color yellow would make you unable to comprehend yellowness. Of course you'd see the same banana that everybody else saw, but you'd have to call the color something else. Thus, your ability to distinguish between colors would be far less than somebody who spoke another language, because you'd never distinguish between yellow and orange. Perhaps this is a better example: in English you can feel frustrated, perturbed, agitated, exasperated, infuriated, wrathfull, uncontrolled and impassioned, but if the only word you know is "mad", you have no way of expressing your feeling with any more certainty. Perhaps you will struggle to describe your exact feeling with words you know, but likely you never figured there were any different types of mad, and you're content to just call yourself mad.

Am I portraying my Minnesotan ethnocentrism when I say that the Eastern Wisconsinites and their word "bubbler" says something about their intellect?

Questions

2009-10-01T13:01:00.002-05:00

I learned early on in my life that asking the right questions in politics is a wonderfully fun experience. I'll explain:

A liberal literature professor was talking to a group I was in, explaining to us the imense worth of the "campus climate survey" which we will be taking in the coming weeks. He explained that this will inform "equitable and inclusive" action for years to come. He also mentioned that the last time a survey like this was administered was 11 years ago. Now, the witty minds out there know that this liberal bunch of manure needs to be outed, but how? The perfect question came out of the crowd: "so what was done 11 years ago"? [Long pause] "Well... I don't know, but I'd guess nothing".

And again, a residence hall was promoting it's Friday night "Condom bingo" as the best thing since sliced bread, and the question emmerges "What's the point"? [Long pause] "Well... it could be fun".

We just gotta ask the questions the liberals don't want to answer.

No lie...

2009-09-30T11:30:00.002-05:00

$2.5 million is being spent to consider alternate designs for the new campus center to avoid removing the Council Oak Tree. To be fair, the tree is featured in the UWEC crest, and has some sort of Indian significance, but it should also be remembered that the actual tree died... this is an impostor oak. This was decided in the same week that the city council approved the original plans.

The same chancellor who elected to save the tree (might I suggest that $2.5 million could have been used as an effective landscaping budget to place plenty of greenery around the new building) is also leading the Tour de Chancellor, to support clean commuting. Of course it's non-competitive.

The local Newman Center, when there are few people in the congregation, celebrates mass by inviting the congregation to surround the alter for the entirety of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, neglecting to kneel at all. A rather flagrant liturgical abuse huh? Unfortunately the kids here don't think so. Where did we go wrong? I've been Catholic for 6 months and I know that the congregation stays away from the alter until after the priest's communion. This rule is commonly violated when the army of alter server's assembles so that the distribution takes 7 seconds, during which the priest can hastily clean the vessels, and get right to the fun stuff: announcements! Even the most liberal Catholics kneel! What's up? They don't even have a crucifix on the wall. Not even a Lutheran no-Jesus crucifix. Not'in!

Serving as the representative for the all-male sanctuary which is Emmet Horan Hall to the Ideas and Improvements board of the Resident's Hall Association I realized that all improvements in modern society are going to come down to how green they are. The hand dryers currently installed in the resident hall bathrooms are worthless. Because they dry your hands so unsuccessfully, most people simply choose to use their pants, or walk away with wet hands. The proposal for a more effective method of drying your hands was proposed. Understanding that paper towels are perceived as ungreen, a more effective hand dryer was suggested. But unfortunately these hand dryers use more energy than the current ones. But the humorous kicker: if we improved the hand dryers, people would actually use them, which would even further increase energy use. Why don't car manufacturs start making cars that only go 3mph, so it ends up being more effective to just walk?

I'd like to add that the University is being sued by the Sierra club for burning coal in their power plant. What an awkward position for the ultra liberals to be in. Imagine it... your all puffed up because in a week your going to go biking to promote freezing your butt off in the middle of winter biking to school (global warming?), when you get slapped with a law suit for burning too much coal. I can just envision it:

Ultra-Liberals who run UWEC: We propose that we offset our carbon emissions with carbon credits, as long as you drop the law suit.
Sierra Club: But think of the irreparable damage you've done so far.
Ultra-Liberals who run UWEC: Fine, we'll pay for the last 116 years of coal use.
(aside) we'll just raise tuition.

Christian Perception

2009-09-23T11:07:00.002-05:00

So many things in the Christian life are about perception. I will give a few examples, and please remember suffering is redemptive!:

Due to computer malfunctions, only 1/4 of my math lab was printed, and so me and my group only got 1/4 of the points. It would have all been a rather simple fix except that the computer was unable to save the file, so we had to do it again. Now, to the grade-grubbing girl in my group this was horrible. "Maybe we won't get full credit! Maybe we won't be able to figure it out again!" Oh! Ye of little perseverance! What a great opportunity to humble ourselves, one ought to think. We did all of the work, knew all of the stuff, and we didn't get the grade for it. We were cheated! What a wonderful opportunity to endure! And of course, as it always does, things turn out wonderfully if only you let God make it so. We re-did 2 hours of work in 30 minutes and got to go up to our math teacher's office, where he was sitting with his lights out on his computer. He got up, after I alerted him that his stapler was out of staples, and he says "it's dark in here! Oh wait, I didn't turn the lights on".

Lately I've been pondering the plights of parish priests. They must be very lonely people: they live, without a wife, with few friends who don't view him primarily as their priest... they live alone. But what a gift that really is! Mary was given an immense gift in remaining a virgin because she didn't have to complicate her life with sex. I'm surprised college students haven't realized this... Priests are given the gift of not having sex! So too, they are given the gift of being alone. Thomas a Kempis is unrelenting in his prohibitions against frivolous conversation: only those who love silence can break it; only those who hate company can have it. If we love any of these things we close ourselves off to the love of God. Now, I'm not saying that these men are never a little annoyed with their gifts; the likely feel as if they were the wife who received a washing machine for her birthday. But such wives are overly attached to material goods, and so too such priests are overly attached.

I have to walk 2 miles to mass on Sunday and 3 miles to confession on Saturday, and because of my club feet I often find myself limping around hoping to not step on my foot the wrong way and send pain shooting up to my knee, and then I screw something up from limping all the time, and it all goes down hill very quickly. But what an opportunity the Lord has given me! I can trust in him to make my walks bearable. And again, such trust is always rewarded in this world, but even our consolations you have to be prepared to receive. There is a joy which comes with giving yourself to God! Hearing a leaf scuttle across the pavement, or being able to crush little cherries falling from the tree by your foot, or having somebody say "hi" to you; what gifts from God! God knows just how to please us... he made us!

You'll never be able to bear any suffering if you insist upon the misery of it to yourself. If you insist on the necessity of what you don't have, if you dwell on the urge (wrong, or often times completely legitimate, right and healthy) that isn't satisfied in you. You have to mediate on the goodness of the Lord! You have to mediate on how good He is to you! Is it any wonder that the Psalms, despite the rather undesirable life the Jews lived, are constantly filled with commands to meditate on the goodness of the Lord, to Love him, etc. I stopped observing feast days while praying the LoH for a while because the actual psalms often come from the First Sunday's psalms, and they are just obnoxiously gushing with praise of God. What a foolish man I am!

Mere Semantics

2009-09-11T12:13:00.002-05:00

"Please discard your cigarette's in the proper recepticle".

Teacher>> What is wrong with the above sentence? Billy, do you know?
Billy>> Well yes... I think that cigarettes should not have an appostrophy. It isn't possesing anything.
Teacher>> Yes Billy! Absolutly correct.

That is a scene which ought to be played out in 2nd grade classrooms across America, and yet, sadly, on college campuses today employees much older than Billy prove to have much less control over the English language. Another example, though perhaps more picky:

"Please do not walk in the flower beds, it is killing the flowers".

Here we have a comma seperating two complete sentences. I should point out that what seperates me from any real grammarian is that I have no clue what that missused comma is called. No, I am just an ordinary guy who knows the English language. At any rate, you cannot seperate two complete sentances with a comma. A period is most commonly used for this, though (my personal preferance) a semi-colon can be used. Observe:

WRONG: Dick went to the store, Bill went to school.
CORRECT: Dick went to the store. Bill went to school.
CORRECT: Dick went to the store; Bill went to school.
OR EVEN: Dick went to the store while Bill went to school.

We have a wonderful language, and it pains me to see it trampled on like this. Or perhaps I should say:

Please do not trample on the English language; it is making us sound like idiots.

Allocate Your Profanities... Please!

2009-09-10T17:08:00.002-05:00

So I'm in the laundry room, throwing my clothes into the dryer, and as I vacate the washing machine another member of the Most Honorable All-Male Emmet Horan Hall is tossing his clothes into the washer. He finishes throwing them in, and realizes he forgot his detergent. But this wasn't an passive forgetting... no. His response to this event was "holy fuck!".

And it occurred to me that, 1) not only is it a problem that college students are SO PROFANE, but 2) they don't bother to think of what they are actually saying. Something like forgetting your detergent deserves a "darn!" or possibly even "shit!", if your having a particularly bad day. But at the point when "holy fuck!" becomes your expletive for forgetting your detergent, what are you going to use for anything else? Nothing holds any meaning any more. You've reached the top with forgetting your detergent! If your leg gets run over by a car, your verbal reaction can be no more emphatic than forgetfulness. If you hammer your thumb into the wall, you got nothing. There is a 104 step stairwell to my dorm here at Eau Claire; you fall down that and, if you can still speak, you got nothing. See the problem?

College students just don't think about what they are saying any more. Requesting God to damn something is a grave act that, well, really isn't our job, right or option. Why can't girls say "I don't intend to be mean/rude/obnoxious" instead of "I don't intend to be a bitch"? It's even more descriptive! You can't carry a conversation with most, even the most gentile of girls without them using God's name in vain. Nothing is ever difficult or confusing any more: it's fucked up.

My roommate is from China, and he tells me that Chinese has far more expletives than English. Perhaps that is our problem: there simply aren't enough words to go around? No! There are plenty of words to go around. I know them because a) I learned them in school and b) I think! The epidemic of poor choice of words infects all words. Look at the word 'decent'. Most people truncate the second syllable these days, saying simply "dec" to describe something which is adequate, sufficient or mediocre, acceptable, unexceptional, or, if words with 3 or more syllables scare you, fair or good.

Please, allocate your profanities properly! I don't care if you say, as drummer Phil Hay did, "I might use words that you guys aren't used to", but at least he did so intelligently!

Liturgia Horarum

2009-09-01T15:49:00.003-05:00

Lately I've been clutching to my Liturgia Horarum. I don't normally pray Matins, principally because I can't understand the readings, and it is called "The Office of Readings" in the new hours. As an aside, I love that the hours have their own atitudes. Lauds is such a "isn't God great!" type of hour (which is why I thought the insertion of Psalm 42 (43) was a bit odd today...),while Compline is a "I'm horrible! The world is horrible! Save me God!" type of hour, and Vespers strikes me as the happy medium; the perfect hour to pray before dinner, when that 4 o'clock slouch hits you. At any rate, lately the readings (of Matins) have been coming from Jeremiah and The Imitation of Christ, two books that I happen to have. So, in fulfillment of my promise to sport some more Latin (which will always be in italics) on this blog I present to you the readings from Matins today, Tuesday in the Twenty Second week of Ordinary Time:

De libro Ieremiae prophetae (20,7-18)
(English Translation)

seduxisti me Domine et seductus sum
fortior me fuisti et invaluisti
factus sum in derisum tota die
omnes subsannant me

quia iam olim loquor vociferans
iniquitatem et vastitatem clamito
et factus est mihi sermo Domini
in obprobrium et in derisum tota die

et dixi non recordabor eius
neque loquar ultra in nomine illius
et factus est in corde meo quasi ignis exaestuans
claususque in ossibus meis et defeci ferre non sustinens

audivi enim contumelias multorum
et terrorem in circuitu
persequimini et persequamur eum
ab omnibus viris qui erant pacifici mei et custodientes latus meum
si quo modo decipiatur et praevaleamus adversus eum
et consequamur ultionem ex eo

Dominus autem mecum est quasi bellator fortis
idcirco qui persequuntur me
cadent et infirmi erunt
confundentur vehementer quia non intellexerunt
obprobrium sempiternum quod numquam delebitur

et tu Domine exercituum
probator iusti qui vides renes et cor
videam quaeso ultionem tuam ex eis
tibi enim revelavi causam meam

cantate Domino laudate Dominum
quia liberavit animam pauperis
de manu malorum

maledicta dies in qua natus sum
dies in qua peperit me mater mea
non sit benedicta

maledictus vir qui adnuntiavit patri meo
dicens natus est tibi puer masculus
et quasi gaudio laetificavit eum

sit homo ille ut sunt civitates
quas subvertit Dominus
et non paenituit eum
audiat clamorem mane et ululatum in tempore meridiano

qui non me interfecit a vulva
ut fieret mihi mater mea sepulchrum
et vulva eius conceptus aeternus

quare de vulva egressus
sum ut viderem laborem et dolorem
et consumerentur in confusione dies mei

E Libro De imitatione Christi (Lib. 3, 14)
(English Translation)
1. Intonas super me judicia tua, Domine, et timore ac tremore concutis omnia ossa mea et expavescit anima mea valde. Sto attonitus et considero, quia cæli non sunt mundi in conspectu tuo. Si in Angelis reperisti pravitatem, nec tamen epercisti, quid fiet de me. Ceciderunt stellæ de cælo, et ego pulvis quid præsumo? Quorum opra videbantur laudabilia, ceciderunt ad infima, et qui comedebant panem Angelorum, vidi siliquis delectari porcorum.
2. Nulla est ergo sanctitas, si manum tuam retrahas, Domine. Nulla sapientia prodest, si gubernare desistas. Nulla juvat fortitudo, si conservare desinas. Nulla secura castitas, si eam non protegas. Nulla propria prodest custodia, si non adsit tua sancta vigilantia. Nam relicti mergimur et perimus; visitati autem: vivimus et erigimur. Instabiles quippe sumus, sed propter te confirmamur; tepescimus, sed a te accendimur.
3. O, quam humiliter et abjecte mihi de me ipso sentiendum est, quam nihili pendendum est si quid boni videor habere. O, quam profunde me submittere debeo sub abyssalibus tuis judiciis, Domine; ubi nihil aliud me esse invenio, quam nihil et nihil. O, pondus immensum, o pelagus instransnatabile, ubi nihil de me reperio, quam in totum nihil. Ubi est ergo latebra gloriæ? Ubi confidentia de gloria concepta? Absorpta est omnis gloria vana in profunditate judiciorum tuorum super me.
4. Quid est omni caro in conspectu tuo? Numquid gloriabitur lutum contra formantem se? Quomodo potest erigi vaniloquio, cujus cor in veritate subjectum est Deo? Non eum totus mundus erigeret, quem sibi subjecit veritas. Nec omnium laudantium ore movebitur, qui totam spem suam in Deo firmavit. Nam et ipsi qui loquuntur, ecce omnes nihil, et deficient cum sonitu verborum. Veritas autem Domini manet in æternum.

Musical Oberservations While Packing

2009-08-29T14:03:00.004-05:00

As I pack for college and listen to Brahms, I can't help but wonder if there is a necessary connection between higher education and drinking: his Academic Overture is a potpourri of drinking song!

As an aside, I have decided that this blog needs far more Latin, with English translations a click away. Today your click comes in the form of a Wikepedia article. One such drinking song is Gaudeamus igitur (a more inebriated example was not available, sadly):

Maria's Music does not support the views or opinions expressed here in (the fifth verse especially), but simply wishes the world would sing drinking songs more often in this day and age.

Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus.
Post jucundum juventutem, post molestam senectutem
Nos habebit humus.

Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere?
Vadite ad superos transite in inferos
Hos si vis videre..

Vita nostra brevis est brevi finietur.
Venit mors velociter rapit nos atrociter
Nemini parcetur.

Vivat academia vivant professores,
Vivat membrum quodlibet vivat membra quaelibet,
Semper sint in flore.

Vivant omnes virgines faciles, formosae.
Vivant et mulieres tenerae amabiles
Bonae laboriosae.

Vivant et republica et qui illam regit.
Vivat nostra civitas, maecenatum caritas
Quae nos hic protegit.

Pereat tristitia, pereant osores.
Pereat diabolus, quivis antiburschius
Atque irrisores.

Well, this all led to a YouTube search of drinking songs. It's quite a popular thing among colleges I guess... MIT does a good one (catch the quote around 4:30?), and the same tune here again (and again)... U of Michigan Ann Arbor...

Spiritual Growth

2009-08-27T18:16:00.004-05:00

Fundamentally there are two types of people in the world: those who reconcile themselves to human nature, and those who reject it. After that, the only way people distinguish themselves is by how willing they are to pursue that. A school friend of mine recommended I read "Prayer: Living With God" by Simon Tugwell (she was recommended the book by another Dominican). Being quite willing to pursue my humanity, understanding my condition to the full, I checked it out, and it has paid off.

Tugwell makes the claim (by his admision copying Aquinas) that humility is rooted in the proper understanding of our humanity, and central to that is the fall of man. There he goes to St. Irenaeus (not St. Augustine), who claimed that man was born immature, and God intended for him to grow up slowly, but man was too hasty, and suffers the consequenses. This is reasonable enough. By eating the apple man grew up too quickly: he took knowledge that he wasn't ready to handle. It's the reason why we don't tell our 4 year old children there are souls burning in hell for all eternity. They aren't ready to handle such a reality.

Here is the amazing part: God, knowing that his beloved 4 year old now knew far too much about himself than he was able to handle made him mortal! He ended his sufferings. Man truly does know God's mind, in the small way that our mind is capable to handle such things. It's not any of our buisness to about sin, heaven, or hell. Why? None of it has anything to do with us really. Oh how I wish the world knew this: the saints do not preach fire and brimstone! Their message is one of love! Jesus is a burning funace of charity. Every drop of water in the ocean would not account for our sins, yet all that water would not cause any hesitation to the fire which is God's love for us. We messed up, but God loved us too much to let it really hurt.

Being a saint is not a matter of not sinning. It's not a matter of aeseticism. It's not a matter of anything! You just have to be yourself. Of course, this is wildly difficult in this day and age. I'm wasn't the kind of guy to play music. It's not that music is bad: God creates people who can play music, but not me. There are different religious orders because everybody is called to do different things. It would be misery for some people to contemplate God in silence all day, and, so too, some people simply could not contain themselves if they had to live with (not in) the world each day.

All you have to do to be a saint is be yourself. You have to understand your human nature. That's no easy task, be so warned. No easy task at all: confronting yourself never is. Crosses and pennences, spiritual reading and prayer, these are all just ways to understand your human nature. Of course they are good for other things too; don't missunderstand me, prayer is not all about us. But at the course of the spiritual life is the pressing desire to reconcile yourself to yourself. (To continue St. Irenaeus' understanding) to do this is to grow up.

True Atheists and True Theists

2009-08-23T13:37:00.003-05:00

A new blog was brought to my attention: Quantitative Metathesis. The writer just recently became a Passionist nun, so she's done posting. I began reading her blog from the beginning and have been thoroughly in awe on a number of occasions. She is such a good writer.

At any rate, I've always been annoyed with Atheism these days. You get this contingent of kids who for whatever reason don't profess the existence of a God, but they leave their philosophizing there (I saw many such kids at my Catholic high school). Then these kids grow up, in bodily age only, and operate in Christian civilization uninterruptedly while still denying a Christian God. They accept an innate understanding of right and wrong, not explicitly, but implicitly, never admitting to themselves that their sermons on "equality" and "fairness" assume that equality and fairness are rights owed to man. The real atheists knew you can't deny God and accept a moral law not stemming from socialization. Quantitative Metathesis girl puts it much better:

When we begin denying the legitimacy of our natural inclinations, we simultaneously begin denying the legitimacy of our selves. In effect, we deny that we have the ability to know good from evil, truth from falsehood, happiness from grief. We deny that there is more to the world than its face value, that there is something other than physical reality. That these distinctions must exist is among the most basic of our gut feelings – even the most hardened materialist and cynic would like them to be true, and is driven to despair and/or madness when he convinces himself that they are not. He denies the truth his heart professes and, in doing so, destroys himself. His self cannot deal with the rejection of truths it knows to be true, even though he is the one who has rejected them, and it wilts within the barred walls of its logical prison.

As you no doubt caught on, this was written in the midst of a post discussing natural inclinations, in fact, the natural inclination Chesterton had towards God. What I think she is identifying is the initial irrationality of so many Christian doctrines. There are so many things that Christians believe that you aren't going to be able to explain to anybody. They may make perfect sense once your in the door, but until then, it's a mystery. That's why the Church calls the Sacraments the Sacred Mysteries! I think God gives us the inclinations that QM talks about in order to get us in the door, and once were in there then he can start to explain it all to us.

Take not that the explicit theology of the Epistles is not in the Gospels. Look at the Gospel for today: Jesus says (last week) "whoever eats my body and drinks my blood inherits eternal life", at which point the crowd responds "this is a hard teaching, who can believe it", and Jesus says "if you wish to leave, go". Jesus knew full well that he wasn't going to be able to insist on the grave, central and incredible nature of the Eucharist in the Church he was establishing. Even after centuries of theology we can hardly put two and two together.

A Thesis

2009-08-13T16:07:00.001-05:00

Modesty is the virtue of limitation which influences all actions. Often we understand modesty to be the wearing of sufficient clothing, but modesty really goes much farther. Mark Twain said “modesty died when clothes were born”. Twain identified an acutely American problem; not the immodesty resulting from too little, but the immodesty of too much. American today suffers under the weight of too much. Austerity (modesty applied to personal possessions), humility (modesty applied to actions) and self-awareness (the modest understanding of one’s self) are all lacking in American society. These lack of these three interconnected virtues is a contributing factor to growing personal debt, increasing health care needs, the widening wealth gap, increasingly centralized power, and a pervasive entitlement mentality. These problems are both problems themselves, and the causes of further problems, most concerning among them the problems we begin to face as the people’s understanding of government’s role becomes more socialistic in nature.

Psalm 94:7-8

2009-08-06T19:58:00.004-05:00

As long as were on the Liturgy side of things: at my favorite high school, back when Father M was around, we'd say "If today you hear his voice / O harden not your hearts", I believe as the psalm antiphon, but possibly as the alleluia verse; I wasn't as attentive to the mass back then. At any rate, in my study of the Liturgy of the Hours, Latin style, I encountered that very verse in Psalm 94, used in the Invitiatory!

Utinam hodie vocem eius audiatis:
Nolite obdurare corda vestra

As seems to almost always be the case, I'm more fond of the Latin rendition. "Utinam" means something to the effect of "if only", "would that" or "oh, that"; it is an adverb of longing. "Nolite" comes from the verb "nolle", and is in the imperitive form. It's the subtulties that did me in: what an opportunity you have to hear his voice today! Don't you dare harden your heart.

I should have been born in 1922, Part 2

2009-08-06T14:50:00.002-05:00

On account of my 7am Calculus II class in the coming months I'll have to follow the wonderful liturgy The Church has without being a part of it. As a side note, isn't it awesome that the Catholic Church has daily mass? And not only can you go to mass everyday, but there are different prayers, antiphons, readings and prefaces for each day. There are different masses for every saint, common masses for different types of saints, and masses for different occasions. So yes, I don't want to miss out on all of that cool stuff even though I'm going to be in a lecture hall instead of a chapel, so I went out and got myself the Vatican II Weekday Missal.

Today, August 6th, The Feast of the Transfiguration, I was rather excited to use my missal for the first time, only to find out that those crooks over at Vatican II make you buy their Sunday Missal if you want to follow the Transfiguration, so, lacking such a Sunday Missal I turned to my much prized, if rarely useful in the modern era, Catholic Missal a la 1943. Check this out:

The modern priest says: Blessed are you, God of all Creation, for it is through your goodness that we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become the bread of life.

But from 1943 to 1962(?) it was: Accept, O holy Father, almighty, everlasting God, this stainless host, which I, thine unworthy servant, offer unto thee, my God, living and true, for mine innumerable sins, offenses, and negligence, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, both living and dead, that it may be profitable for my own and for their salvation unto life eternal. Amen

And then: We offer unto thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, beseeching thy clemency that, in the sight of thy divine majesty, it may ascend with the odor of sweetness, for our salvation, and for that of the whole world. Amen.

I Quote Exactly

2009-07-23T17:52:00.002-05:00

I'm learning it's tough to learn utter crap. I think the reason I never studied any to much in high school was because it all made so much sense. The only things I had to learn were the things that I couldn't make sense of except by memorizing them: trigonometry identities and biology vocab come to mind. All of my teachers were so good at making sense. That's because they were teaching me how to think more than they were shoving knowledge down my throat. Well, in Sociology 242, Modern Social Problems, this is the stuff I'm memorizing. I think the individual statements are ridiculous enough, I'll forgoe the commentary. I quote exactly:

"The powerful, by making and enforcing the laws, create and define deviance."

"In essence, the largest corporations control the world economy"

"Capitalism generates inequality"

"Thus, the candidates tend to represent a limited constituency - the wealth"

"The law does not exist as an abstraction"

"The schools, for instance, consciously teach youth that capitalism is the only correct economic system. This indoctrination to conservative values achieves a consensus among the citizenry concerning the status quo.

"Whenever the interest of the wealthy clash with those of other groups or even of the public at large, the interest of the former are served"

"The poor, being powerless..."

"Foreign policy seems to be carried on in the light of the needs of the munitions makers, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the multinational corporations"

[My favorite] "Religious beliefs, such as the resistance of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and of fundamentalist Muslim regimes such as in Saudi Arabia to the use of contraceptives, are a great obstacle to population control. However, religion is not an insurmountable barrier. Despite the Catholic hierarchy's resistance to family planning, some nations with overwhelming Catholic majorities have extremely low birthrates"

[My other favorite] "Malnourishment also causes a low level of energy. [Footnote:] Although low energy levels are a result of poverty, many persons have blamed poverty on an inherent lack of energy, or "drive" in the poor - a classic example of blaming the victim"

Deviance

2009-07-21T09:53:00.002-05:00

"A guiding assumption of our inquiry here, however, is that norm violators are symptoms of social problems, not the disease itself. In other words, most deviants are victims and should not be blamed entirely by society for their deviance; rather, the system they live in should be blamed."

'Social Problems' - Eitzen, Zinn and Smith

A wise history teacher of mine once made the claim that liberals have a problem with human nature. I didn't completely understand what he meant (I had actually just finished saying liberals were complete idiots... his refined analysis caught me off guard), but now I think I do. If we can't accept our nature, that we have free will, that there is evil/wrong and good/right actions, and that our free will can choose evil, then you get the above quote. Get this: if we say that there are deviants and there are non-deviants, and the deviants are victims of a society of which they are not a part of, that means that non-deviants cause deviance. How's that work?

The Obligitory Monthly End of the World Political Conspiracy Post

2009-07-03T17:00:00.003-05:00

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.

If only the government paid for 1/3 of my home, or 1/3 or my heating bill. If only, if only.

Socialism is comin' folks.

Liturgica Horarum!

2009-06-30T19:09:00.004-05:00

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.

The decrease in supply and increase in demand probobly did not lead to a lower price level (because the Vatican no doubt hopes to avoid bidding wars for such books, the competition over them being so high), but the real GDP of the Vatican increased by $400.

More to follow for sure, but for now a page (actually, my favorite page in the whole book. Pay special attention to the Heth, Teth and Jod bits from the book which was free, but just a bit too usual:

***** 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.

But do we have to act like 6 year olds?

2009-06-28T21:46:00.003-05:00

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.

I Love Nuns!

2009-06-23T17:16:00.001-05:00

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.

A Nun's Life is now on my Bloglines feed.

National Debt

2009-06-23T11:12:00.004-05:00

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.

Freedom

2009-06-22T13:19:00.002-05:00

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.

Americans and Their Money

2009-06-18T21:22:00.003-05:00

"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

I should have been born in 1922.

2009-06-15T23:41:00.005-05:00

I promise I'll stop writing these awful flowery-fiction bits. At least God has given me a small insight into my future: it's not in fiction. Now if only he could just blurt out which one it is.

I should have been born in 1926.

Maybe I would have been born on April 22nd, the same day Charles Mingus was born. Mongo Santamaria was born a week or two earlier. Judy Garland and Charles Shultz were born later that year. Flutists will be able to appreciate that I'd be the same age as Jean-Piere Rampal. Pope Benedict XV died and was succeeded by Pius XI. Women were able to vote! Ghandi was at work (in the form of being imprisoned for sedition), as were the rising Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Politics might have been ominous (or maybe it only appears so in the modern lens), but American music was starting to simmer. Louis Armstrong started playing with King Oliver, Kid Ory started recording. Irving Berlin and George Gershwin were both writing, but they waited to become great until I was a bit older. Massenet, Hindmouth and Stravinsky were writing new stuff too.

People still had kids back then. And they lived in small houses, and they didn’t make much money. The depression would have hit when I was a child. What a great gift! Self-imposed mortification is always done so half-heartedly. Maybe not having food, cloths and such would have served to increase my attachment to them, but hopefully not. My parents would have been smart: God provides, and when you think he doesn’t he’s really just providing in a different area. Cheap entertainment would have been a necessity, idleness being seen correctly: somewhere between the “all idleness corrupts” philosophy of the late 1800s and the inactivity of the hippies. The sound of the family radio might have filled the small living room many nights. TVs would have been unreasonably abhorred by my family. I have no reason to feel the way I do about TVs now. Newspapers were still read back then too. And books. Lots of books. I could bought E.E. Cumming's poetry the day it hit the shelves. And F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Elliot. It might have become incumbent upon me to somehow incorporate single letters into my name, since using your first name in it’s entirety was so out of style. Instead of the Border's book shelf being filled with Maya Angelou (word, Abecedaries), E.E. Cummings, and would have filled the shelves. You can buy a book for than the cost of a movie ticket, and it gives you hours of entertainment and learning. Movies give you 2 hours (the first and last half hour are filler anyways). I’m reluctant to call modern movies as a whole entertaining, enjoyable or anything of that nature. Not so when I would have been a kid though. Movies were art.

I would have been drafted into WWII (after lying about my age). Despite being a skilled saxophonist I would have thought playing music was sissy, and that I was drafted to shoot. My love would have been dismayed, but she would have sent me beautifully written letters while I was over seas. Women had beautiful handwriting back then. Now girls stylize it so much you can hardly read it. An "S" mind as well be a "l" and a "r" looks just like a "v". But not when I would have been 18: women wrote in beautiful cursive. I would have gotten back in '45 or '46. We would have married soon after. CS Lewis' writings would have come to me when I was about 20: if I was confused about God, he would have set me straight. Probably wouldn't have been: moral degradation seems to be a modern invention. Ugly churches, lame priests and "praise music" too. People got married at 20 back then. And they didn't have to go to college to avoid unemployment or mindless manual labor. I could have done very well for myself without spending 4 years at an institution, whether it be one of higher learning or mindless occupation (the line is now quite blurred).

My children would have enjoyed groups like "The Cadillac’s". They might have seen "The Sound Of Music" on their first date. My son would have opened the car door for his date (a 1957 Mercury Monterey. He had to wait until his senior prom to drive dad's car, a black 1956 Thunderbird). She would have said “thank you” too. Men hold doors today and women stick out their arms (they apparently are worried the man might forget their is a women passing through the doorway and in their forgetfulness allow the door to shut in their face). Probably all feminism at work. They don't need men to hold doors open for them. Back then feminists were real women who wanted respect, not these jokes of women who devalue themselves constantly by trying to be men. The kind of women who get treated wrong and say “I think very highly of myself, and I’m not going to marry you if you act like an idiot”, and the boy is scared into knowing what’s what. Nope, my son’s girlfriend would have been a real woman. Maybe they would have danced to Elvis. I wouldn’t have revolted like the rest of society. The same ridiculousness surrounded jazz musicians, all of whom I would have liked as a kid. I would have been justifiably critical of many groups inability to play a 4/4 ballad though. The relentless presence of pulsing triplets would have unnerved me.

I would be 70 years old right now. I’d be old enough to embrace the modern world correctly. Too often kids today cling to their iPods, televisions, computers, cell phones and all the rest thinking that it will make them happy. I would have lived 70 miserable years knowing where true happiness consists before any of the “revolutionary advances” of the modern world. I would probably sit and read books all day. I would have grown up when the church still spoke Latin, so I’d study Latin too. If my wife were to die before me I’d have a requiem mass is Latin said for her soul. I would go to daily mass also, but unlike the wonderful old men and women at daily mass these days I would refuse to utter a single word of conversation until I was well away from the sanctuary. Perhaps I’d go to get a cheap breakfast with my friends after the 7 o’clock mass. I’d go home and perhaps do a little cleaning. Perhaps Rachmoninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto would be playing in the background. I’d sing along, even if I was reading a book. I think in my old age I would have recourse to books that are even older than I am.

I would die without much to do. My kids wouldn’t dare sell my books. They would understand that books are a representation of a person. Knowing what books are on a person’s bookshelf tells you more than talking with them for an hour. They are the physical representations of that man’s understanding. My books would be full of years of scribbles, underlines and discourses. The handwriting would be slightly different at various points, as I came back to the great classics at least every decade. I would direct my house to be given to my grandchild who was engaged at age 22. My corpse would rot just as effectively in this day and age as it will in 70 years when I might actually die, but I have to think that as time presses on the rot which eats away at the soul will only grow.

The - I've Read That - Book Store

2009-06-13T13:45:00.002-05:00

I got so excited about this I figured I'd tell the world about it. So here is what a day in my brand new business idea:

A young customer comes in. Perhaps he has a half hour to kill, or the prospect of many more free hours brought him to the book store. At any case, this is not the kind of book store that you would choose to go to with a particular best selling book in mind. There are stores for that already, and the I've Read That bookstore is one of a kind. The store front is relatively plain: white bricks and two windows suffocate the small door. In one of the windows a small piece of cardboard is turned to reveal "open", painted with a steady hand in red. Over the doorway in obnoxiously large red letters reads "I've Read That Book Store".

Once inside the building the young customer takes a quick survey of the surroundings. Books shelves built into the wall surround the store, and each section has two or three of it's own. In the middle of the first section is an over sized chair. A stack of new books surrounds the chair in a haphazard arrangement. A selection of loose leaf tea, a few snack items and a large 3-ring binder filled with loose leaf papers, complete with scribbles, sits on a small table next to the chair. Inside the chair a man who glows with scholarship sits. There are 8 such sections in the store. In the middle of the store is a circular fireplace. On one side is a wood pile. Across is a manly assortment of fire-tending tools, and on either side coffee makers and an assortment of glasses. The fireplace is no doubt the focus point of the store, and it is around here that a half dozen men stand, talking about who knows what.

The young boy, a bit frightened by the apparent depth of the fireplace conversation walks over to the first section (one of the many whose chair is not occupied) and begins to search through the books. One can tell that the books were once alphabetized, but under the strain of masculinity have fallen out of what was inevitably feminine perfection. On the shelves he sees all sorts of books that he knows he ought to read. He pulls out "Paradise Lost" when an animated man with a slightly rectangular face pops up. "I've read that!". The boy is startled, as most men would be, but that is to little effect. The scholar is the sort of man who doesn't care about such trivial things. He continues in the same relentless manner he began. "Milton said it was his attempt to 'justify the ways of God to man'. It's sure somethin'." The boy hadn't said anything yet, and this man was the sort of man who could talk uninturupted for hours. Seeing no reason to stop he continued on, "he writes it in the style of the great Greek epics (the illiteration causes profound excitment in the man's voice), except it's all Christian stuff."

The boy, having regained use of his vocal chords mutters, "yeah... I've heard about it." "Well let me tell you, it's a great read. You might not want that edition though. This one here has a great set of footnotes in it, but the font is a bit small." The two exchange books and an odd silence ensues. "Make sure to come back and tell me what you think" the scholar practically shouts as he hammers the young man's back. The boy goes to the cash registar, but the cashier is a passive participant in the fireside conversation. One of the scholars tells the cashier he's got to get to work and laughter ensues. A characteristic cackle is heard over it all as the cashier runs over to the register, a feat which would have been extrordinary for any of the schollars, who are all a head of hair older than the cashier. Eventually, perplexed by it all, the young man leaves.

Yet the cozyness of it all intrigues him, and after finishing Milton's epic he goes back in. The store is the same save exactly 8 obnoxious hanging signs with names on it. Today all of the scholars are sitting in their chairs reading. They shout out lines every now and then. A "Bill" looks around the corner of his book shelf and says to "Arthur" - you ever read Aquinas' bit on temperance? "Yeah... I got a doctorate in the stuff". "He surprises me every time!". A "Kevin" shouts across the aisle to "Adam" - "Era algo menor que yo, y no sabia de ella desde hacia tantos anos que bien podia haber muerto. Pero al primer timbrazo reconoci la voz en el telefono, y le dispare sin preambuls: - Hoy si... What eloquence!" "Indeed" is the laconic man's reply.

The young boy wanders around and finds Todd, the man who had handed him what really did prove to be a superior edition of Paradise Lost. The scholar is engrossed in his book. The schollar looks up and shouts "Hey Tony, can we get some music with a beat on here". The boy hadn't noticed that music was playing. For a moment he appreciated it, but a profoundly British voice covered it up: "That's Mahler's 2nd Symphony! (He begins to translate the text) 'Man lies in deepest need! /Man lies in deepest pain!Oh how I would rather be in heaven.'" Another Kevin, this one learned in German instead of Spanish, continues "Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg: /Da kam ein Engelein und wollt’ mich abweisen. /Ach nein! Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen!" It is firmly cemented in the boys mind that these men, with their sweatervests and glasses of tea are, at the heart of it all, really old children.

As this was happening the man labeled Todd immediatly recognized the frightened boy. The two discuss the book in some detail, and (nobody really cared about the music anyways) the other scholars join the conversation in the same way. "Is that Paradise Lost?", "Yep", "I've read that!".

As we approach what in the rest of the world is the Feast of Corpus Christi...

2009-06-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

Being relatively new to Catholicism I often have questions. I suspect that may continue into my old age, but for now the pressing question is this:

Why is it that the United States has a special calender such that all of the solemnities are moved off of weekdays onto Sundays?

I have taken to using these guys as my authority on all things liturgically scheduled and according to them us Americans have gotten jipped out of the Ascension and the Feast of Corpus Christi. So all of you learned calendrical liturgists (too much of a stretch?) out there, I ernestly implore your explenations.

Sappy Socialism

2009-06-08T18:53:00.003-05:00

Over at Apologus I announced the beginning of my first college course: Economics 104 - Macro Economics. I have my worries about economics. The tendency to make man a rational animal is certainly present. It's to be expected: it's not within the economists field to posit a role for Christian love which supersedes rationality and we should be glad that they don't overstep their bounds. Aristotle and Plato (and no doubt more whom I've failed to read) did well with a loveless-philosophy. Notions of private property are also seemingly continuously attacked by those who are supposed to explain it. After the first day it's been going well though. The book is careful (and never obnoxiously so) to present unbiased truths. At one point they are discussing resource supplies when they say "although some of our energy and mineral resources are being depleted, new sources are also being discovered," and that's the end of it.

I was worried when I read the discussion question:

In our world of limited resources, no one can have all the economic goods and services they want. Therefore, each society must have a way to determine who gets what and how much. In practice, this is often determined by a combination of many different factors. Over the last 30 years, income inequality in the U.S. has steadily increased. There are more poor and more (extremely) rich people than ever. The number of middle-income people has been decreasing.

In your view, what factors determine a person's income in the U.S.? What is the "fairest" way to allocate goods and services? Should we have so many poor people and so many rich people? Should the government use taxes, government spending, and regulations to alter the "free market" results? Briefly explain your ideas.

The door is wide open for the private-property-hating socialists to scream "Bill Gates needs to give up his money because there are kids starving in the slums of Chicago"! But nobody has yet. My offering to the discussion made the claim that "invaluable" skills (such as those possessed by business executives) really do deserve more money and thus equality of goods and services is impossible. True fairness consists in each getting his due.

The only flaw that my classmates seem to be hung up on is that money has to come from somewhere. Outright socialism or capitalism are both intellectual pursuits. Capitalism with a sprinkling of socialism is an emotional pursuit ("but I just feel so bad that he doesn't have a college education"). In as much as I tend to think that most of America is ruled by the latter I think we see how the sprinklings of socialism have showed up throughout the years.

A Mr. S thinks that low-interest government loans should be given to those desiring college education or pursuing legitimate business plans. Miss. E thinks that college education ought to be free. They forget that a college education is over and above "humane" education. It would be inhumane to deny anybody a high school education, but beyond that your going for specialty training. It's inhumane to deny anybody basic nutrition, but T-bones ought to be regarded as over and above the basics. College is not a need, and while our society has faulted us all into thinking so we ought to be careful.

If the cost of sending one kid to college really is $10,000/year then the 220 billion Americans over 19 will be paying 173 trillion dollars a year to send the 17 billion 18-21 year old college students to school. Maybe only 1/3 of them go to college (approximately the number of college graduates 22-25 currently). That's still 60 trillion, costing each American another $250 in taxes a year. And even that number is low. Public universities already get government money to offset the cost to the consumer (that is what we are). Private educations run as high as $50,000 at some colleges. So the price is probobly higher than $10,000/year. More over private donors who provide scholarships, grants and other financial aid to colleges would cease to be as prominent of a reality.

And here is the painful reality of it. Lets say you pay taxes from 22-82. The government gets your money for 60 years. Assuming a flat tax you'd pay $15000 to this college fund anyways. But it doesn't work that way. Those who go to college are going to make more money and pay more taxes, while those who do not go will pay less in taxes. In the end the free education simply pay for itself over 60 years. I suppose it is a low interest, long term loan at it's best, but how's that been working out for America?

A Very Proud Papist

2009-06-02T13:56:00.004-05:00

Of late the Catholic Church has been outrageous, and I love it. Firstly, at the ordination mass the Saturday before Pentecost I saw not only 4 arch-bishops and 3 monsignors, but at least 75 priests. On two different occasions the Catholic Church made the congregation sit and watch every single priest come by in a single file line and lay hands/hug the 3 newly ordained priests. What other church can rest on it's awesomeness to such a degree that it makes it's congregation sit through something like that? Most churches attempt to treat their congregation like kindergartners who's attention spans need to be worked within. And the mass of priests speaking together during the Liturgy of the Eucharist was (in very literal terms) to die for.

And secondly the readings of late (particularly the first readings) have been hilarious. I think Tobit is my new favorite book of the Bible. We get to hear from Tobit until Saturday! Here was today's first reading:


: That same night I bathed, and went to sleep next to the wall of my courtyard. Because of the heat I left my face uncovered. I did not know there were birds perched on the wall above me, till their warm droppings settled in my eyes, causing cataracts. I went to see some doctors for a cure, but the more they anointed my eyes with various salves, the worse the cataracts became, until I could see no more. For four years I was deprived of eyesight, and all my kinsmen were grieved at my condition. Ahiqar, however, took care of me for two years, until he left for Elymais. At that time my wife Anna worked for hire at weaving cloth, the kind of work women do. When she sent back the goods to their owners, they would pay her. Late in winter she finished the cloth and sent it back to the owners. They paid her the full salary, and also gave her a young goat for the table. On entering my house the goat began to bleat. I called to my wife and said: "Where did this goat come from? Perhaps it was stolen! Give it back to its owners; we have no right to eat stolen food!" But she said to me, "It was given to me as a bonus over and above my wages." Yet I would not believe her, and told her to give it back to its owners. I became very angry with her over this. So she retorted: "Where are your charitable deeds now? Where are your virtuous acts? See! Your true character is finally showing itself!"

And all throughout Easter we heard from Acts. I smiled when the first reading consisted of: so and so went to such and such a place, and met with some people. He said some wise words, converted them, baptized them, and left for another town. What an uninspiring first reading! But the church doesn't need to have inspiring readings or captivating sermons. It has the Eucharist! I laughed after this reading from last Thursday:

The next day, wishing to determine the truth about why he was being accused by the Jews, he freed him and ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to convene. Then he brought Paul down and made him stand before them.Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees, so he called out before the Sanhedrin, "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; (I) am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead." When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the group became divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection or angels or spirits, while the Pharisees acknowledge all three. A great uproar occurred, and some scribes belonging to the Pharisee party stood up and sharply argued, "We find nothing wrong with this man. Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?" The dispute was so serious that the commander, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, ordered his troops to go down and rescue him from their midst and take him into the compound. The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage. For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness in Rome."

Isn't the Holy Spirit great! In a tough jam? The Holy Spirit will find some utterly ridiculous way to get you out of it all!

I am a very proud papist these days.

Like and Love

2009-06-01T21:38:00.002-05:00

When I was elementary school the question used to always be "do you love her", which was one step higher than liking her, which was one extremely minuscule step above coexisting with her. But for a Christian it's entirely different.

A nun once told me that you can love people before you even meet them by praying for them. You can pray for your future wife, your boss, and (especially pertinent for me right now) your roommate. What more loving thing is there than to pray for somebody? After loving the obscure person, you may one day meet them. Maybe they are a celebrity-sort that you will never meet. But if you meet, then coexisting becomes the second in the chain of affection. And then you may just like them.

In Kindergarten I coexisted with those who I knew, liked a handful, and "loved" even fewer, but as a Christian I can love everybody (even folks I don't know), coexist with a small portion of them, and actually like a handful of them.

Music Monday

2009-05-17T21:47:00.001-05:00

This blog was once all about music, so here's to it's roots!

"September" - The Earth, Wind and Fire:

"Mountain Roads" - David Maslanka:

Me and the bari player used to be great friends. A girl got in between us, and we haven't spoken since.

"Prehensile Dream" - The Bad Plus

prehensile -

1.	adapted for seizing, grasping, or taking hold of something: a prehensile tail.

2.	able to perceive quickly; having keen mental grasp.

3.	greedy; grasping; avaricious.

Christian Salvation

2009-04-23T16:50:00.002-05:00

"To little does any man love You, who loves something other than You, not on account of you"

“Love, and do what you like”

“In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”

2009-04-20T19:38:00.002-05:00

I wrote a nice academic post about accessibility in music, and how were doomed because the socialists killed Shostakovitch. I accidentally posted it at dooHicky, then promptly cut the text from there, hoping I could delete the post (which I can't) and put it up here. Well, it didn't work, so now all I have is this rather unsatisfying piece, a blank spot at dooHicky, and a dismal hope for American music. In less than a month I will have my "Liturgica Horarum" Vol. 2! Maybe I'll get over my frustration with the internet by then and tell you all about it. Because, of course, you care.

I wrote a dense post about love a few nights ago, but it was poorly written, so I ended up taking it down. In it's earlist forms I used a few facebook status' as evidence.

160 words of privacy destroying maddness

2009-02-19T16:02:00.003-06:00

It seems that American's are all too willing to give away their rights these days, and the right to privacy is no difference. A British history teacher of mine said that privacy was one of his most privileged rights. Makes sense for Christians to say that: the saints give up "rights" all the time, but the one thing they cling to is privacy. The ability to silently pray and contemplate God are indispensable. The one thing Christian's can't deny themselves is God, but everything else is fair game.

Twitter has been popping up everywhere lately. I don't get it. Why would you embrace the idea of giving up your privacy? Of course it's normal to do that these days. I'm doing it right now, sharing thoughts that even 50 years ago wouldn't have the possibility to reach millions. Facebook and Myspace aren't much different than Twitter, but they do serve some beneficial purposes. But Twitter... what for? Why take the time to narrate your whole day to the world? Why would you want anybody knowing every thought that comes into your head? Even more, why does anybody care about everyone else? I don't doubt that they do, but it perplexes me.

More and more were entering an era where privacy is nearly impossible. Silence is on it's way out too. Even in mass it's something to be feared, as if simply the sounds of shuffling feet and "The body of Christ" would make praying the mass more difficult. The constant music doesn't facilitate praying the mass. People wake up to alarm radios, listen to music in the shower, watch the news while they eat breakfast, listen to the radio on the way to work, listen to the radio on the internet at work, listen to the radio on the way home, complain about their days at dinner, watch nightly news and go to bed. They can't even escape from the noise in a bathroom or elevator! Even when your in the middle of nowhere you have your ever convenient iPod to keep your ears filled.

Privacy is going to be no different. The masses will narrate every moment of their day on Twitter. You'll be able to update it on your phone. And when your not typing, you'll be reading what the rest of the world typed. It will be 160 characters of privacy destroying madness. People will forget how to be alone. They'll scare themselves. We already have self-check out lanes and online shopping. The man who lived on the top of a mountain who nobody ever saw was portrayed as frightning in movies, but now it's a reality, except we live in suburbs.

Supposing truth were a woman

2009-02-14T06:53:00.003-06:00

"Supposing truth were a woman - what then?"
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Preface to "Beyond Good and Evil"

Before he even begins to discredit the last 2 or 3 centuries of philosophy as superstition he gives you an beautiful little maxim for pursuing truth. Court it like a woman! God's shameless. He inserts himself in every little thing. The devil's equally shameless, but not nearly as clever. God winks at you but the devil smiles.

Nietzsche was smart, whatever you say about him, unlike the stupid atheists out there who simply don't get it. You can either accept that there is a omniscient, omnipotent and eternal God who loves and desires his creation, or you can deny it. It's your prerogative, but once you make that choice you have to follow through with it. You have to realize that nothing temporal can make you eternally happy - atheists give up their ability to pursue eternal happiness. It's no different than geometry where if you deny Euclid's "superstitions" you get a whole different set of things. To say that one is better than the other you'd have to accept that all men desire happiness, and apparently that's a difficult jump for some cats. Well, he's German, so I'll have to get back to you after I read it twice more.

---

I feel bad for guys like St. Patrick and St. Valentine that have their feast days taken away from them. Happens to Jesus twice every year! It's not even Valentine's feast day anymore! Stupid world. Well, at least we know God really loves us: I can't think of any other reason he'd truly become man; the same man who strips him from everything they touch.

Obama

2009-02-12T06:32:00.002-06:00

This didn't actually happen. But it so could have! Horrible nonsense called music and the "cultured" Barack Obama looks on intelligently. I'm being unfair, but I can just see the scene unfolding. Oh Obama... please avoid socialism.

Facebook Messages

2009-02-02T19:25:00.002-06:00

Facebook can become more philosophical than you may think. I exclaimed to a friend, "jazz is dead!" recently (I was the salsa band I felt for a year ago), and he (lets call him, at random, Peter, since it seems like a fitting name) sent me this facebook message:

Nice job @ the dance; don't get too put out by the sheeple who can't dig it; you said that Jazz was dead. I nodded at the time, but it's not true. Jazz is alive, but not because of the musicians. Jazz is a sort of rebellion, from the mainstream, to a talented and beautiful music form. It can never die; it's always there. Sometimes it gets covered up, but it comes from an instinct that can't be muted for long. [besides, you got some extra dough, which is bombdigity, you rugcutter, you.]

I was responding too him (not that it required a response, but facebook is designed for unnecessary fake interaction, so much so that it's almost expected). It would have been unfortionate for the boared passer by or crazed stocker to read that there (not for his sake, but mine. Simply employing proper punctuation draws suspician on facebook... coherent thoughts might really break the levies) so I figured this would be a better venue.

Peter, Music relies on other people. That's where the problem is. On the most basic level this musician/people relationship is really a musician/consumer relationship. But that can easily be gotten around, as many starving musicians of far less inteligence than Peter have done. Music is something that seemingly is better than money to many. I'd agree, but then again I'd rather have The Imitation of Christ than a million dollars, or know how to pray the rosary than know how to make a billion dollars. That is to say I might not be in the majority, but lets move on. Musicians commonly rely on the listener just to feel welcomed or needed. I don't know of many musicians who put in their 10,000 hours to continue playing in their own room. Coffee shops are filled with musicians who want to be listened to. But music even rises above the desire for the assurance of others in some individuals. But even these individuals commonly rely on other musicians to play with. It's much more yes (adjectives like fun, awsome, or even exhilirating don't nearly cut it... yes, though it lacks description for the unknowing should be the right word for the knowing) to play with a group than alone. But then when your piano and bass player show up high you realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Some cats (musicians) come to the realization that music can't make them happy. Music in itself can't make anybody happy: they only way there are truely happy musicians are those who are called by God to be a musician. There are happy janitors: how could you not be a happy janitor if you were doing your work to fulfil God's plan! It takes grace to be a happy musician. Musicians who do it against God's will are miserable. That's why music, drugs, sex and all other sorts of false pleasures (sin) are so often related. Shouldn't suprise us: what do you do when your miserable? You either pray to God and put your happiness in him, or you try to do it all yourself by false means of happiness.

Musicians can't be too smart. I hope there aren't too many musicians reading this. There is another kid at our school, we'll call him Jack, since that is also a random yet fitting name for him. Jack wants to be a musician, and could (he'd have to take it all a bit more seriously, but he's one of those kids who naturally desires seriousness in anything he does) but he's too smart. One day he'll realize it's all fleeting and do something else. He's too smart to be a musician. He'll be able to pursue that path as long as it's benifitial to him, then God will make it miserable to him and he'll still push on thinking he has an obligation to music, but the moment he realizes his obligation is to God he will have to drop it all. He's only able to push out the miserableness because God isn't pouring it down on him (he'll learn discipline and other things from music) and all the happiness music gives him is hiding up what miserableness is inherent in the whole buisness. I'd be laughing at this if I was reading it, since I'm in no uncertain terms saying what God's will is. I speak out of experience, but I wanted to give you the example of Jack, whom you could relate the freshness of enamored musicians to much easier than you could dig through my cynical crustiness and find what once was Jack.

That seemingly has nothing to do with jazz being dead, but it really does. You can't be a happy jazz musician anymore. Firstly the drugs that kept Charlie Parker (whom I think would have been an academic genius) going are gone; you end up in jail much quicker now adays and drug life is far less glamorous or easy than it was. Secondly the crowds are gone. It's exhilirating and assuring to play infront of a huge crowd, or even to have people dance while you play, but that doesn't happen anymore, as we both saw, so the musicians are left without that fleeting desire for others aproval (which really stems from self-love). So what can make the jazz musician happy anymore? Only the grace of God makes them happy. They have to be playing jazz to fulfil God's will.

I've long had a fantasy about becoming a Dominican monk and then starting a jazz group with my fellow brothers and bringing it to the local clubs. We'd play in our friar garb and be the hippest, God centered jazz musicians ever. But God wouldn't allow this if it wasn't right. The jazz would distract me from prayer, or self-mortification or somehow hinder the tools that perfect my soul daily, and I would realize it. My soul would yearn for God and if I tried to fulfill it with jazz music, a jazz that isn't in God, I would continue to yearn. Yearning of the soul makes you miserable.

So, in a longwinded roundabout way, that is (at least in my head-up-in-the-clouds way of looking at it) why jazz really is dead, or at least to us thinking members of society it is. Rather than brood we should think of how good God is! That he only lets us fulfill his will. Jazz is dead was the wrong phrase to use, because that implies a universality. Jazz is dead to me because I can't be happy playing it, which was magnified when God cut off that self-satisfaction of other appreciating what I do (all GLORY be to Him!). To the high musicians you saw on Saturday night, jazz might not be dead, but it's only living on the fleeting happiness that comes from rejection of the Good.

Yes

2009-01-31T09:24:00.001-06:00

How cool is Jesus!

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and Him Lord and God."

- C.S. Lewis "Mere Christianity"

A surprising number of authors in Lewis' time used their initials: G.K. Chesterton, E.E. Cummings, T.S. Elliot, H.G. Wells... humans are a weird bunch.

Music is Dead. Microsoft (and BMG) killed it.

2009-01-30T21:05:00.005-06:00

Ick. How can we even consider that the future of music? I hope it's all a satire. Even after you get beyond the ridiculous styles, the music just sounds so removed. Well, I suppose "supermaning the hoes" has already made it big. If the general public buys Mr. Tell'Em's work, why wouldn't they buy that.

When did music lose it's humanity!

God's Love

2009-01-29T16:19:00.002-06:00

Abecedarius Rex wrote a post about Emily Dicken's poem "I'm Nobody, Who Are You?", but something about what he said left me longing (here's why). Maybe I'm still a rosy eyed youth (i'm not too much farther along than those sophomores), but I think life can be beautiful. There is a God, and He loves us! But that's horribly difficult to say and be taken seriously. My early religious education consisted of "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" and bewilderment at the shear number of Snickers and banana shaped runts that were in heaven, and I don't think I'm in the minority. You pull the "Jesus loves you" line and it all seems very childish, but that's because nobody bothers to tell you that Jesus loves a sinner!

That's when God's love start to mean things, and that's what Mr. Rex gets exactly right: Jesus loves a sinner. He describes our state as a "vast, abyssal darkness... a gulf so profound and terrifying that it is difficult to express it to anyone else lest they think of you as a freak". Makes sense then that we can't hope for any happiness to arise out of self-reflection, because we really are the nobodies that he articulates. Yet we can find happiness in God. Life isn't "an exile on the blasted plain which is cold, alone, and desperate", because we have God, who's infinite warmth and consolation never leaves us!

There is another step after realizing where it ain't at, and that is realizing where it is at.
Atheism allows man nothing more than Mr. Rex's description of man. What they really do is stop at their own worthlessness. The only reason they can gulp down that prospect is that most deny their own worthlessness. That's foolish, but we can't see through ourselves and stop either; the whole point of seeing through our own existence is to see God.

There are no miserable saints!

The Human Soul

2009-01-19T19:55:00.003-06:00

I haven't had any original thoughts lately. I don't think anybody in the modern era can have an original and moral thought. But in my unoriginality, here is another perfect quote:

"How does he [God] manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.
"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all." [replied Mustapha Mond].

- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

You can't get rid of God: he leaves a hole where he should be, where man wishes he was. People wonder why God doesn't give them concrete, physical reasons to believe, and they are right, he doesn't give that to most people. But he does give us a hole! God is Good, God is Great, God is Excellent!

2009-01-18T17:54:00.002-06:00

"Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself - that comes too late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be."

- Marlow ("Brave New World", Joseph Conrad)

--OR--

"for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis"

- E.E. Cummings "since feeling is first"

Inactivity

2009-01-14T16:14:00.000-06:00

I've been waiting 3 years for these guys to get their acts together!

Parable #1

2009-01-12T20:44:00.003-06:00

My literature teacher reads one of Soren Kierkegaard parables every week. I'm going to try my hand at the form (and my favorite Danish philosopher’s writing style!):

How ought we to attend to the spiritual health of others?

Consider entering a hospital with the intention of visiting your ailing spouse. As you move on your way you pass by several rooms occupied by strangers. Cries of pain and discomfort echo all around the hospital walls. Do you not also feel a discomfort knowing that your fellow man, stranger as they are, suffer under such a load. Now consider you pass the room of a distant friend, whom you have not seen for years. Would you not stop and comfort your old friend for just a moment in hopes of lessening his suffering and introducing joy into his disposition? After some ways you enter the room of your spouse. You would no doubt spend all day in that hospital room comforting your loved one. Now, consider that you were a doctor. Would you not go to great lengths attempting to cure your spouse, or any sick person you were to encounter? And would you not be negligent and cold hearted to withhold any energy attempting to restore peace and health to those in need? Now how can any man rightly withhold his comforting or curative powers when considering a health that is vastly more important and eternal than the forgetful and momentary nature of man's life on earth?

Don't fear, God's love is here!

2009-01-10T13:44:00.004-06:00

This might be the first of many quotations from St. Therese of Lisieux's "Story of A Soul": the quotation below was taken from xvi - xvii.

She called her doctrine "the little way of spiritual childhood," and it was based on complete and unshakable confidence in God's love for us. This confidence means that we cannot be afraid of God even though we sin, for we know that, being human, sin we shall but, provided that after each fall, we stumble to our feet again and continue our advance to God, He will instantly fogive us and come to meet us. St. Therese does not minimise the gravity of sin, but she insists that we must not be crushed by it. We must repent and realise that God's love never fails. And God's love for us must be matched, within our human limitations, by our love for Him. There must be a ceaseless flow of love - to and fro- between Creator and creature. Now this interchange of love does away with the feeling that to please God we must do great and extraordinary things. If we only fear God, we are in danger of deluding ourselves that He needs to be placated by deeds which, in some measure, match His awful majesty. Few saits have appreciated this majesty better than St. Therese, but she never is overawed by it. She accepts it and accepts, too, the fact of her own littleness by the side of it. She knows that nothing she can ever do can be adequate, but this leaves her quite untroubled. The depth of her love for God means that all the small, trivial acts of which she is capable take on great value because of the motive behind them. And God, with His overwhelming love and understanding, accepts them joyfully. So "the little way" means that salvation is made not easy, but obviously possible. Salvation has, of course, always been possible, but from time to time there have arisen within the Church movements such as Jansenism which belittled or denied God's mercy. The Church has invariably condemned such movements, but these heresies have left their mark and men have been plunged in despair, believing that they could never achieve salvation, that a life of unbelievable austerity and heroic deeds was essential, and that without such a life they were of no account before God. This is rank heresy. He whole teaching of the Church condems it. But vestiges of it still survived.

And of no relation to this awesome quote (John Beevers write better introductions than your average editor): the Shostakovitch Jazz Suites! Their not "jazz" but their cool.

"Jazz is dead"

2009-01-08T16:32:00.002-06:00

So MPR cut "The Jazz Connection"... we all knew it was coming. I don't know the future: I don't know where music could possibly go, but the one thing I can assure you of is that unless Americans go through some radical changes in every area but musical tastes, anything with semi-advanced harmony, good melodies and ingenuity is dead. Jazz is dead. Classical music is dead. Why are we surprised? American's can't pay off their credit cards: you expect them to go through the drudgery of listening to a Mahler Symphony. The drudgery of understanding a Mahler Symphony. This post wasn't designed for this, but this is how it is (from a speech addressed to my fellow student body):

The late 19th century composer Gustav Mahler believed that a symphony was a representation of an entire world. This seems striking, but for obvious reasons. We have been instructed in reading and literature since we were in Kindergarten where as classical music is taught incredibly briefly in the music classes we’ve all forgot from middle school. You learn a few key pieces from a few key composers and your done. You’d think that classical music was run by 6 men who each wrote 2 pieces for the past 400 years if you took those classes as your sole guide. We were lucky to listen to a full piece even once. And we received no instruction in the language that the composers were using. Comparatively we (at least ideally) read before class, then go over it in class, and then refer to it in consecutive classes, and eventually we write an essay about the book. If we treated classical music the same way we would take each musical section apart, listen to it carefully at home, then deconstruct it phrase by phrase in class, and eventually write our own sophisticated piece. That simply is not the case, so it is difficult for us to understand the purpose of a Mahler symphony. We don’t think of it as a new world, just the same way as no kindergartner is going to think of “The Inferno” as a new world.

Pamela Espeland had some good quotes from angry emailers:

"Me, I'm pulling for Lightrail to reroute through their lobby."

"Pardon my French, but those bean counters at MPR are assholes."

And she added:

Allow me to suggest that we include KBEM and KFAI in our giving plans. And to suggest that in the midst of the economic crisis, the cutbacks, the layoffs, the downsizing, our personal economic troubles, our worries, and our fears, that we do what we can to support live jazz. If we want it to be there and available to us six months from now--whether at the Dakota or the AQ, Orchestra Hall or the Ted Mann, the Rogue Buddha, the Kitty Cat or the Hopkins Center, the Clown Lounge or the Hat Trick or Cafe Maude or any one of the places we can experience this remarkable music in person--let's get out there, kids. Now is the time.

But people act as if jazz is still entertaining to the average American. And I agree with all the people who claim good music isn't always entertaining, just like great books are a bore to read sometimes, but nothing sells in this day an age if it's not entertaining. Don't fool yourself into thinking that jazz is all that entertaining. It's not! Why would it be? The thing is you don't see "normal" people at the AQ. Cafe Maude isn't staying open because of their late night jazz jokes on their smaller than cramped stage. And if we keep flocking to auditoriums to hear jazz it's going to be just like classical music (cue Greg Sandow). You should be able to yell during a jazz concert. "YES!" or "DON'T HURT 'EM". Not the pretty golf clap.

Why is everybody surprised that the intelligent, elevated forms of music are dying? Because intelligent, elevated people are dying!

Sunday night Television

2009-01-04T21:26:00.002-06:00

I iron my shirts on Sunday nights, and that's when I get all my TV exposure. Tonight I watched the history channel's treatment of the 7 deadly sins. Actually, I only caught the last two episodes on anger and pride. In each one the ultimate conclusion was that man is helpless in freeing himself from the sins. Anger is caused by the brain and pride is necessary to succeed (IN OUR WORLD... not in God's world). The history channel didn't know what they were talking about but at least I was able to get a good laugh in once. They had some Yale professor on saying that Capuchin monkeys (observe the cute cuddly picture) exhibit pride, and therefor there is reason to believe that pride is in man's DNA. I don't know why it is so revolutionary to tell me that pride is part of my nature, but I digress. Yes, the Capuchin monkey was the key to the whole argument.

It was almost as if a sly, clever writer was forced to say that we can't help ourselves, and so he used a monkey with the same name as a Franciscan offshoot (observe famous Capuchin, Padre Pio, below). Yes, it was a good laugh. While their saying that man can't help but be proud and humility is impossible they are constantly reminding me of saintly friars who are given the gift of humilty by abandoning themselves and loving God. There had to be an inside man. Or maybe the history channel really is that naive.

Speaking of humility, Padre Pio and his stigmata offer a great example. The first picture I saw of Padre Pio was this one, featuring his stigmata promanantly. Saints like Padre Pio and Catherine of Siena are given the gift of suffering like Christ did. And you'd think that you'd flaunt those suckers around if your going to suffer for 30 some years with them but no: the saints who recieve them ask for them to be made invisible! They don't want them to go away, just invisible. They want to suffer the pain without recieving any of the recognition for it. I suppose the history channel would say that the saints are insane. They forget how AWSOME God is! He can make you such a holy person that you'd joyfully accept thankless suffering to come closer to him. If the saints delt with having nails driven into their hands for 20 or more years think of all the small insignificant daily things we can offer up to God, so that our suffering might bring us closer to the one who suffered death for us.

Kenny Gorlick

2009-01-01T23:26:00.004-06:00

I'm sorry, but I wish the whole world could read Basil's quote and Pat Metheny's quote:

"But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible."
-Pat Metheny

The DJs my school hired for dances used to end every dance with that cursed track. It'd be one last chance for all the couples to see how much the female could depend on the male to support herself, and how close to sleeping they could come while slowly gyrating back and forth. Highschool would be so much better if it wasn't populated with teenagers.

St. Basil the Great

2009-01-01T22:51:00.002-06:00

It's St. Basil the Great's feast day tomorrow. Check this out (source):

Modestus had threatened him with confiscation, exile, torture and death. St Basil said, 'Well, in truth, confiscation means nothing to a man who has nothing, unless you covet these wretched rags and a few books; that is all I possess. As to exile, that means nothing to me, for I am attached to no particular place. That wherein I live is not mine, and I shall feel at home in any place to which I am sent. Or rather, I regard the whole earth as belonging to God, and I consider myself as a stranger wherever I may be. As for torture, how will you apply it? I have not a body capable of bearing it, unless you are thinking of the first blow you give me, for that will be the only one in your power. As for death, this will be a benefit to me, for it will take me the sooner to the God for whom I live . . .' The Prefect said that nobody had ever spoken to him like that. St Basil replied, 'Perhaps that is because you have never had to deal with a bishop.'

Happy New Years

2008-12-31T16:19:00.005-06:00

I don't understand New Year's eve. It's just another day isn't it? So why save self-betterment until them? Seems to me you could make a resolution on November 14th, or March 23rd just as good as December 31st. And why stay up till 12:00? The sun is going to rise the next day just like it does every other day, except your going to be tired.

This is the 100th post of the ambiguously titled blog that I write. I can't decide what to call it. I never liked Maria's Music, and "i thank You God", while being a great poem is not a good name for a blog. Pretty uneventful post for #100. So here is a poem by E.E. Cummings!

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

Frederick Dewayne Hubbard, RIP

2008-12-30T09:54:00.003-06:00

Unfortunately he will be mentioned most when telling kids to warm up. That's the show business for you.

Information Received

2008-12-27T21:50:00.004-06:00

I always liked the D(o)T(he)M(ath) "Information Received" posts so maybe an aspiring young philosopher will enjoy knowing the information I received lately. I got a few good books for Christmas, which prompted me to spend a little too much money at Borders. Knowledge is expensive. I wish I never had to attend to all the pedantry of highschool education again. But I still have half a year of teachers showing up 20 minutes late for class and 15 minute bitch sessions and watered down math classes and YouTube videos and showing movies because you don't want to teach and all of it! I wouldn't be able to recognize that my time was being wasted if I didn't attend the school I do though. Oh well... nothing human is perfect.

Christmas week 2008:

The Blue Castle - Lucy Maud Montgomery (I read it purly because it was recomended to me (it isn't exactly my normal genre), but all in all it is a good read. I'll post a essay on it at The College Blog later this week)
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I listened to the beggining of the audio book, but I'm going to give the whole book a chance)
Sence and Sensibility - Jane Austen (It was really cheap. How can you turn down paper back books under $7. And I figured if I can't stand it I might be in a better disposition later on in life. I think I might have bought it for the same reason right people listen to Mozart)
Persuasion - Jane Austen (The first of the three I chose to read. So far it's captivating! I refuse to discredit it, even though it is Jane Austen)
Selected Poems - E.E. Cummings (Richard S. Kennedy) (To properly address my obsession. I didn't know he was a painter - that explains it all! His poetry is so artistic!)
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (I threw away the copy I read in 8th grade (oh how stupid!) so in the course of re-reading all those old books I didn't pay attention to, I needed to actually obtain a copy.)
This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald (I have never went wrong with Fitzgerald (The Penguine "Jazz Age Stories" is excellent)
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross (popular aclaim and a love of Alex's blog (when he used to write on it!) propelled this purchase)
The Imitation of Christ - Thomes a Kempis (I've been thinking about obedience and suffering with respect to Christ lately)
Story of a Soul - St. Therese of Lisieux (recomended to me by a good friend)
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (probobly an important read for the next 4/8 years)
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis (you can't go wrong with C.S. Lewis)
The Great Divorce - C. S. Lewis
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles (also appropriate given the next president)
This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel J. Levitin (recomended by a sales clerk)
The Dialogues - Catherine of Siena (recomended by my fortunate peers who were taught this book)
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alghieri (John Ciardi) (I have read (for the purpose of attending class, not understanding) the Inferno, but when I have a long time I'm going to go through the whole Comedy slowly so I can actually learn from it!)
The Collected Works - St. John of the Cross (I have read some of his poems in Spanish (the translation doesn't do it justice. You would be well served learning Spanish for the soul purpose of reading "El Noche Oscura" properly) and I've always been fond of collected work type volumes)

I don't have room for all of them on my book shelves; all of my wonderful books are stacked in a leaning pile. I am a very lucky young man. Now I just need to time and energy to go through it all.

The Word became Flesh!

2008-12-25T07:07:00.003-06:00

The official soundtrack of Christmas (no, it's not "Hey Santa") ought to be Handel's Messiah. I normally can't stand listening to Handel, but is there any song that expresses Christmas better than the Hallelujah Chorus. Especially when it's loud and fast!

Middelburg Altarpiece - Rogier van der Weyden

(I love the next one! Check out the CHAOS)
Nativity - Martin de Vos

Mystic Nativity - Alessandro Botticelli

The Readings for today kick butt. Jesus kicked butt. So take that devil!

December 8th only, all items 50% off! No interest until 2010!

2008-12-23T11:01:00.004-06:00

One thing I can't get over is how disgusting the Christmas season has become. The birth of Jesus isn't even necessary for the holiday anymore; you could name December 25th President's day and people would carry on in their mindless, addicted ways. I spent last Christmas in Mexico and the one thing that surprised me was how understated it all was. On Christmas eve everyone was saying "Feliz Navidad!", and then Christmas day came, and it could have been any other day, and by dinner time all the shops were opened. Christmas was treated like every other important day in the church: no shops advertize Immaculate Conception sales! I just want "the holiday season" (could you find a more clinical name!) to be done with so I can concentrate on Jesus. The Advent painting of the day helped.

"Adoration of the Child" -Antonio Allegri da Correggio

Our bud Leo

2008-12-21T18:58:00.003-06:00

"The Virgin, Child, and St. Anne" - Leonardo da Vinci

I promise I'll stop posting E.E. Cummings poetry soon... I just love this though. And the "abandon reason, indulge in your feelings" tone isn't so off-putting. "Everything / which is natural which is infinite which is YES!" And the penultimate stanza!

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

2008-12-20T14:41:00.003-06:00

My self-importance has been boiling over lately, so I created a second blog, Apolgus De Colegio. Actually the real purpose of "The College Blog" is so that when (if) I am in college my family will be able to read about all my humorous, fun-loving exploits. In other words a line has been drawn between the heavy (stay tuned here) and the lightweight (the other blog). So I was faced with a dillema today when I was diciding where to post a new post: I submitted my denunciation of resumes in the "tell us why your great" essay slot. I decided on Apologus De Colegio. Somehow I think keeping the two seperate is going to be very difficult. Which is a flatering statement about myself I think: not much comes that you can't comment on intelligently.

And today's depiction of Mary and Jesus!

"Virgin and Child" - (history here)

Le Sommeil de l'Enfant Jésus

2008-12-19T16:20:00.004-06:00

"Le Sommeil de l'Enfant Jésus" - Benvenuto Tisi (the Garofalo)

The 1949 Grammy Awards

2008-12-19T07:28:00.001-06:00

I wish I lived in 1949. When do us moderns have two songs as great as this competing for the Academy award?!?

"Baby It's Cold Outside" - Frank Loesser

Unfortunately that is all to real of a reality right now. And the runner up:

"My Foolish Heart" - Victor Young and Ned Washington

I hate versions of this song in 6/8. It's a 4/4 ballad!

Bill Evans got it right:

Virgin Mary - Raphael

2008-12-18T22:18:00.010-06:00

Christmas day is next Thursday, so to lead up to it I will post a painting with Mary and baby Jesus in it each day until Christmas morning when the big time, adore God by gazing into the eyes of a perfectly drawn Mary and marveling at the perfectly humble baby post will come. But in the mean time we will lead up to that. Unfortunately the orthodox blogger didn't let me have huge pictures, and I was fed up, so I went this new route. I once again reaffirmed how ignorant of HTML and the times I live in I actually am.

"Virgin Mary" - Raphael Sanzio

JESUS!

2008-12-18T21:53:00.003-06:00

I go to the best high school ever. Maybe the best educational institution ever. I'll hold judgment until I spend a few years in college. But nobody likes admitting their ignorant of the future, even though it's the most ridiculous thing to be confident of, so maybe I will claim it's the best educational institution ever. But that's why I wonder: how confident was God that Jesus would be taken care of on Earth. Of course God knew, but would Jesus be fully human if his life wasn't subjected to the mundainity of human existance? See, this all started when my amazing, stupendous, I want to grow up to be like him headmaster (I LOVE having a headmaster!) said that Jesus' coming (Christmas, however odd that is to our modern minds) was a great act of humility. And of course it doesn't take much in the way of a spiritual life to realize that Jesus came down and died for people that hated him. You'd be the nicest person in the world if you lived like that. It might only take a day to understand when people love you so much they do stuff you hate, but when people you hate do stuff you hate you have to try to be like Jesus, which takes a lifetime. And some people never do it. I digress. So Jesus' coming was an act of humility in a different way, because he made himself vulnerable. Jesus scraped his knee (and bled real, red, juicy, gushing blood, not ambrosia) and other boys picked on him! And he was TEMPTED. So you can either say that this is proof God is rediculous and organized religion is foolish, and that is (it pains me to say this) a fair read of this story. But as Aristotle (I think?) said "it behooves the learner to believe", and as Augustine says over and over (paraphrased) "you can't get to God if your proud", so for all the humble, believing souls out there: JESUS LOVED YOU SO MUCH THAT HE SCRAPED HIS KNEE FOR YOU.

GOD IS GOOD! GOD IS GREAT! GOD IS EXCELLENT!

It's not nearly as mundane as you might think! It's miraculous. It's complete mystery. It's incredible!

After I spend a few years in college I think I will also stop using excessive capital letters, but hopefully not, because sometimes God is so good to you the least you can do is give him capital letters. It's like giving God the double highfive instead of the one handed variety. It's not fair how good God is to us. God is always watching over you, and if you want to do something stupid, he's there to stop you! I wish I truly loved God and all his little schemes.

More of Edward Estlin

2008-12-18T17:59:00.006-06:00

Maria's Music has always been a family-friendly blog (I always found that term funny... as if children and adults ever find the same "family-friendly" talk show, movie etc. interesting. A better term would be child-friendly I think.) but in my desire to award my own thoughts some importance (for what other purpose is their for a blog) I want to share this E.E. Cummings Poem, the boys i mean are not refined, because I think that it's pretty neat. And it happens from time to time that a certain poem is an 18+ kind of poem, so if your vulgar little eyes are under the age of 18 your plainly not old enough to read this! STOP!

It's neat even more so because it uses some choice language. Early on in my blogging history I made the claim that choice language has a purpose, when used with discretion, as a conscious choice, and I'm no flip flopper (for life is no parenthesis). And how else could you address a disgusting problem than with disgusting language? Proccede with caution:

the boys i mean are not refined

   the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

Some people just don't capitalize

2008-12-17T07:00:00.003-06:00

E.E. Cummings didn't. I wish I knew definitively if Cummings wrote cynically. I'd guess not, but he should have. Auden got it better I think. The first:

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

you shall above all things be glad and young

   you shall above all things be glad and young
  For if you're young,whatever life you wear


  it will become you;and if you are glad
  whatever's living will yourself become.
  Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
  i can entirely her only love


  whose any mystery makes every man's
  flesh put space on;and his mind take off time


  that you should ever think,may god forbid
  and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
  for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
  called progress,and negation's dead undoom.


  I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
  than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance


And the second:

(From Prospero to Ariel)

Will a Miranda who is
No longer a silly lovesick little goose,
When Ferdinand and his brave world are her profession,
Go into raptures over existing at all?
Probably I over-estimate their difficulties;
Just the same, I am very glad I shall never
Be twenty and have to go through that business again,
The hours of fuss and fury, the conceit, the expense.

Links Galore!

2008-12-14T20:43:00.008-06:00

I know I'm two days late for a link post, but all those traditionalist "Friday Link Post" bloggers can eat it!

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The intelligent and thoughtful Good Thunder graciously corrected my errant post about The Feast of The Immaculate Conception.

But the scientists out there didn't lose the battle yet! According to our friend Franz Karl Naegele you calculate the estimated date of birth by taking the last menstrual period , add a year, subtract three months and add seven days to that date. So it'd all look something like:

March 25
- 3 months = December 25
+7 days = January 1

But then again Jesus could be born 7 days early...

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I saw two comercials on Nickelodian that I couldn't help but laugh at:

There was a time when little girls took care of real babies. How laughabal is it that the little girls of our generation take care of virtual kids!

Don't skip out... watch it all, it only gets better in the last 3/4ths. Nick actually made a game where kids go around shooting toxic chemicals. The youngins can even reduce their CO2 emmissions, as if they had any in the first place. Dennis Prager argues that "the war against tobacco is a symptom and cause of a shallower society. It has done far more harm to America than tobacco." We'll have a generation that thinks driving a car is worse than lieing pretty soon.

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I have never thought of what biblical figure I'd want to be, but Good Thunder chose John the Baptist. I might want to be Solomon. Reading Augustine's Confessions I stumbled on this proverb today: Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee (Proverbs 9:8). You'd have to be pretty wise to deal with 1000 wives/concubines, especially in a time when half of the men out there can't stick with one.

I love how ragged he looks! Give up all your worldly convinces, bath in rivers, eat bugs for dinner and do the work of God! Amen!

----

President Bush got a shoe thrown at him! Pretty good reaction time huh?

I guess it's not too odd of a choice.

----

Do The Math brought some interesting stuff to light!

I'm fond of "don't listen to me, I'm supposed to be accompanying you". Monk had to be the most humble piano player ever to grace the keys. Or foolish.

And "they tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along and spoil it." Most people can hate someone they know. Sometimes a good guilt trip does my soul good: I remember that Jesus died for people who hated him.

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I want to remind the world that Obama isn't President yet, and in fact he won't be the President-Elect until tommorrow (December 15th).

And I continualy laugh at the close-to-home Coleman v. Franken escapade. This year my excellent, amazing, incredible highschool bought a shinny Scantron machine, and there have been no mishaps filling out the forms yet. And if there were, we'd get the question wrong. Now why can't America be as smart as highschool students?

And why would you alight Mrs. Palin's church? I'm glad they held service elsewhere today! Stick it to 'em.

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The favorite, Miss. Russia, won it all. I'm glad we can judge young woman's beauty in a time when we refuse to judge people based on how they dress, speak or act. But even this messed up reality is proof of the existance of God. Don't think I can do it? Watch! (After this brief picture)

(Miss Russia herself)

These women come from all over the world and are called beautiful by all nationalities.

All women in the Miss. World competition would be called beautiful.
Despite national differences, tastes in beauty differ little.
And why is this? Not because of nurture. It's because of nature!
Certain parts of the female anatomy have instinctual draws, sure, but what primitive man would comment on the beauty of Miss. Bosnia-Herzegovina's (my personal favorite, only because of her country of origin) face. Nope... it's bigger than instinct.
And what is part of man's nature, yet more distinctivly human than instinct?!? THE MORAL LAW! God is GOOD, God is GREAT, God is EXCELLENT!

Miss America's greatest achievement "is being accepted as a member of the Entertainment Revue"

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John Cage's Indeterminacy.

" However, to come back to my story. A girl in the college there came back backstage afterward
and told me that something marvelous had happened. I said, “What?” She said, “One of the music majors is thinking for the first time in her life.” Then at dinner (it had been an afternoon concert), the Head of the Music Department told me that as he was leaving the concert hall, three of his students called, saying, “Come over here.” He went over. “What is it?” he said. One of the girls said, “Listen.” "

Advent!

2008-12-10T17:50:00.002-06:00

I love celebrating seasons of the church. Not because they mark historical dates but because they remind us of themes we can forget in our faith life. Think of how ridiculous celebrating dates as historical markers is? The Feast of The Immaculate Conception didn't even exist until 1476. The room for historical error, especially considering the historical accuracy of the times was plainly high. And even beyond that, the rediculously short pregnancy, or rather long pregnancy, considering that Christmas is less than a month away, would be odd indeed. Even more, why would it be at all important to your faith life to believe that Mary concieved on the 8th of December? Some people look at this and use it as evidence for why all of us religions types are crazy but they forget it's all about reminding us of themes.

On December 8th we celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception. A teacher of mine had us sing Happy Birthday. Being a man much consumed in the significance of actions he didn't tell us why we were singing, but my guess is we were reiterating the point that life begins at conception and that celebrating Jesus' coming. Most folks would sing Happy Birthday to Jesus of December 25th, but not at my school! But when I got beyond the pithy humor I was glad to be reminded of the theme of the day: The Virgin Mary. It struck me that she was perfect, without any sin. I can't go a day without sinning, and when ever I think I do I know my conscience has grown lax. And think of how lucky a guy Joseph was to marry a perfect women! There was a new post up at Modestly Yours that day and it became plain to me that The Virgin Mother cares about those women and how they act and dress. That she would even care about us is miraculous: God at least made us... you could (hubristicly and probobly hereticly) say he has a vested intrest in our success but what does Mary care about us? And if Mary cares about us so much and has so little reason to how can man care so little about his fellow man when he has all the reason in the world?

Free Jazz

2008-12-07T22:23:00.003-06:00

I wrote this as part of a larger speech I am going to deliver on Jazz. I thought it came out pretty well:

The term free-jazz is frightening to most because we have been taught to believe that banging on cans with spoons can be legitimized under the term “free-jazz” but like all music free-jazz can be looked at objectively. You need to distinguish between good music and bad music, and then good music you like and bad music you like. The free-jazz of Ornette Coleman may repulse your ears but to say that it is bad music I would argue is ignorant. To say that banging on cans is good music is ridiculous. Free-jazz is only slightly different than what we have been calling jazz all along. Free jazz eliminates all structure to the music. But jazz has little structure in reality. The most structured jazz song will have a written melody and written chord changes that are strictly adhered to. Jazz musicians had been improvising melodic lines in their solos since it’s inception and Miles Davis almost eliminated chord changes for jazz with his modal expeditions in Kind of Blue. It was not a great leap to decide to compose the melody of the tune on the spot and establish the tonality as the solo saw fit. Really the free-jazz musician is doing what any classical composer does, but while it took Beethoven 6 years to write his 9^th symphony free jazz musicians compose instantly. It may seem like I’m downplaying free-jazz but in reality this was a huge step in jazz. You could play whatever you wanted to, whatever you heard going on in your head instantly. The freedom from convention that John Coltrane sought came to complete fruition. Yet this didn’t come without flaws as every great innovation does. The folks who were still listening to jazz lost the ability to say what was good and what wasn’t. Bad music was hailed as revolutionary because it was new. Even more distressing, iconic figures enjoyed instant popularity of every work they put their name on, no matter what it’s quality. Once again jazz became comic this time through Ornette Coleman. No doubt his music was revolutionary. His “The Shape Of Jazz To Come” is a landmark album in jazz. But unfortunately after that everything he layed his name to was hailed as genius. The Bad Plus, a popular jazz group today posted a piece about an Ornette Coleman chord change that encompassed all 12 musical notes, but in reality there was no A; only 11 notes were there. This lead to the response, “maybe this is a sly commentary on Ornette's essence - like, he doesn't need all 12 tones to actually have 12 tones?”. When Ornette decided to pick up a trumpet and violin and do what any parent of a 5 year old would call make noise but what jazz critics called genius one has to wonder. In another humorous yet ridiculous plot Ornette threatened the admittedly promiscuous women who hung out in jazz clubs at the time saying he would castrate himself if they did not leave him alone. He never did, but to seriously make such a claim necessitates mental instability.

Bratz Dolls

2008-12-06T17:15:00.003-06:00

"Barbie has regained control of the doll house". I'm no fan of doll houses myself, but it grants me great glee knowing that the next generation of girls will be saved the Bratz Doll.

You go Barbie!

Dakota Combo

2008-12-04T16:35:00.004-06:00

They say in church communities that without youths the community will die, and that with them it flourishes. The music scene is the same way, especially because of the connection between youth and advances and music. I have no doubt that the Minneapolis music scene (which is surprisingly strong for such an otherwise dull state) will thrive for years to come. I sometimes wonder how I ended up playing with such great players. So come to the Dakota and support live music (I feel like I've made it now that I've had an opportunity to throw out the cliche musicians phrase!).

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

2008-12-03T03:00:00.001-06:00

I'm writing a Symphony for Chorus in short to try and get money for college. I should have started 5 months ago but yesterday I embarked, and since I long ago said I'd never write lyrics again I needed to find some poetry. I decided on William Wordsworth's 5 "Lucy Poems". One nice thing about putting the poetry to music is that you memorize the poetry by accident. Check this out:

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

My initial thought was that Billy Wordsworth was wispering sweet nothings in his lover's ear about the shiver's she sends up his spine. But I'd contend that it is really much deeper than that. "Strange fits of passion" can be read as the moments when love of God overwhelms the soul and all you can do is shout "God is awesome". And "the Lover" can also be thought of as God, who unceasingly loves perfectly. So you have 4 things he can be saying then (pardon the ineloquent language):

1) I tell her how great she is
2) I tell God she is great
3) I tell her how great God is
4) I tell God how great God is

I think the 4 lines encompass all 4 interpretations. Wordsworth and Lucy (if she ever existed) aren't just a lustful grouping. To Wordsworth (and probobly only in Wordsworth's at this point slightly irrational mind), Lucy parallels the divine. The passionate response to God that comes in private prayer is paralleled with the response that company with Lucy brings. And Wordsworth is seemingly humbled (and embarrassed) by both. He only says how perfect the Lucy/God parallel is in life to one of them, and in the poem only under the ambiguous term "Lover".

I'm semi-neglecting the other 6/7ths of the poem right now. But can words even describe how incredibly better a Lucy that parallels the divine is than a Lucy that parallels a English Romantic wench?

Trees and Loves

2008-12-02T22:03:00.000-06:00

I've been negligent in my commitment to mention a few things I will miss about my high school on a more regular basis. I just wrote a college essay about how awesome my high school was, so I'm well prepared to submit two today:

I will miss attending a school that puts up, count 'em, 4 (big, full, tall) Christmas trees with lights and all. And there is none of this "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" or "Festive (insert religious/belief/thought neutral statement here)" but it's "MERRY CHRISTMAS!".

I will also miss attending the high school that has the best religion classes ever. Actually that a high school even has religion as a (real) class is pretty cool in my book. Today's religion class at Providence Academy was especially cool. First we discussed the liberal arts, and in an almost telepathic fashion my teacher gave me the perfect apology for my favorite liberal arts college, Thomas Aquinas College. I was using, "learning about the created world brings us closer to God, and so any study of that, whether in math, literature, music or any other pursuit, is worthwhile and noble" but I like his "the liberal arts allow you to and actually think" better. Much more direct.

And then we got into talking about real friendship. The class's vihament opinion that evil people can have friends, and that beliefs have nothing to do with friendship held up the whole thing. I contend that Stalin had no friends ( he killed whatever you could call a friend) and the devout Nazi and Jew were never friends.

But it caused this great need in me to spend too much time rereading C.S. Lewis' The 4 Loves and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Bks. 8 and 9). I have been slowly finding time for Lewis over the past 3 weeks, and I was actually just nearing the chapter on Friendship. And I had read The Ethics during a particularly gruesome part of philosophy class, so it was done pretty shabbily. I took my time and found a lot that I missed! Oh if only I could do homework to actually learn.

And in addition to finding stuff I missed, I actually knew what it was all talking about! It was such an awesome feeling. I could puke it out on a test last year, but now I actually know what it's all saying. I could have wrote out "Eros thinks that a woman being herself is infinitely more important than that she is a woman" a year ago, but re-reading it today I know that it's true.

And that is why half of me wishes I could go to Providence Academy for another 4 years. And the other half of me wishes I could skip the next 10 years of life.

Tradition for Tradition's Sake

2008-11-30T15:59:00.002-06:00

I got this email today,

let's add this tune to our list as a "just in case"

All Of Me, trad. jazz style, group improv on head, gutbucket bone, ect.. (everyone find Louis' versions)

and I was dismayed. I think we all have a few standards we really dislike playing and All Of Me in a "trad. jazz style" is 3-10 minutes of boredom for me. It's one of those songs where the ride cymbal sounds like Ben Stein at his worst. The tempo is bad. The melody is mad. The harmony is interesting, but the harmonic movement is pitiful. And no doubt the lyrics are worthy of a better tune. In short All of Me strikes me as a gray-haired octogenarian musician, 5 people in the club on a Tuesday night kind of tune.

But then I listened to Louis:

Aside from the obnoxious Freddie Green comping it amazed me how much they had figured out back then, that his recording was more interesting than recordings 50 years later. I think the tune still stinks, but what Louis did with it was great. He takes out all the boring stuff! It's genius. His trumpet playing is magnetic, so why bother focusing on anything else! It makes me think a ballad, block-chord solo piano method might be a good way of presenting this tune. Sometimes Louis made so much sense... and that's why tradition for tradition's sake makes young jazzers dread All of Me.

The Golden Proportion

2008-11-29T20:56:00.000-06:00

I had a literature/philosophy teacher who claimed that the golden proportion unlocked the meaning to the universe. And the kids who didn't care thought he was nuts and the kids who cared tried to mathmaticly disprove his golden callipers. I've come around though. Maybe I can provoke a blog post on the whole subject out of him, but here is my rather poor presentation.

So the golden ratio is about 1.618:1. See it exactly here (if your much smarter than I can can understand wikipedia articles about math...). And you can make golden calippers that maintain that proportion:

And then really cool stuff happens (I like the fig leaf. Mathematicians are always so modest. It's great!):

And shells:

And flowers:

And coffee (from the movie Pi. I've never watched it because supposedly it ends with the guy drilling a hole through his head). The golden ratio bit is at the end:

And in the human body! And face!

It goes on forever. The Marquardt website (the "face" link) is awesome! I really hope young girls aren't running out to get their face shaped to the golden proportion but I suppose that's at least marginally better than getting it shaped to be like Paris Hilton.

Grace is free

2008-11-28T23:09:00.000-06:00

I was on the treadmill when I remembered a scene from my 10th grade literature class. One of the students completed her quiz and asked (in that brown nosing kind of tone that only serves to make the teacher-student relationship less amicable) "what should I do", now that she was done with her quiz, and without warranting her even a quick glance my teacher responded, "sit quietly and contemplate your sins". So then I figured it would be an opportune time for me to run quietly (I am one of those hopelessly loud treadmill users) and contemplate my sins. But because the devil is so witty and cunning I quickly started thinking about popular culture's sins, which soon turned to the trampling at the Wal-Mart today, which soon turned to pondering what has become a complete commercialization of Christmas. But since God is more witty and more cunning than the devil he reminded me that grace is free!

And from that I realized that grace will get any human farther than something from Wal-Mart. I was about to say that Jesus being born was the best gift any man could receive but then I remembered another story from school. One of the first days of history class the teacher asked in his intellectual British accent what the most important historical event was and somebody said "the birth of Jesus". He commended them in his across-the-pond way of commending students and then asked what the second most important historical event was. Nobody raised their hand so I figured I'd start off the year strong and be the only one to answer, so I said "the death of Christ" and the whole class stared at the teacher, who was unjustly faced with the theological decision of which aspect of Christ's life was most important. Apparently the correct answer was much simpler: the agricultural revolution.

But remember that this Christmas season. If you don't have any money to buy somebody a gift, pray for God to give them grace! It's a big paradox: it is priceless and costs nothing! It's something so much better, so much cooler, so much awesomer than anything that can be wrapped up. And praying for somebody else helps you too. Sometimes when it snows my family wakes up early and my mom makes breakfast while the rest of us go shovel the neighbors driveways, and my dad used to always say that we were doing it because of the maxim do good things for others, but me and my sister always knew that 2 of the neighbors were going to pay us very handsomely, and if we tried to give it back they would have none of it. Praying for somebody is kind of the same way. You do it because it's really good to pray for other people, but in the back of your head you know that it will help you too.

That's how I know God exists: only somebody who created this world and continues to govern it could be the overarching theme to three completely unrelated stories about post-quiz time, history and shoveling.

I can't stand it!

2008-11-28T20:24:00.000-06:00

I've never been angry a Do The Math blog post, but I just don't get it (the stereotypical 1800's German is Karl Marx). Hasn't history pretty well shown that once you drink the socialist stew your country has about a 30 year life span before it collapses? And I'll remind you that American GDP is 60 times Venezuela's. It's be a hard case to make that those 30 years are really fruitful years. And hasn't human reason pretty well ironed out that private property is good and necessary. I repeat: PRIVATE PROPERTY IS GOOD AND NECESSARY! If any of my readers really despise private property I invite you to share your favorite jazz CDs with my high school band room. Coltrane would be much appreciated. The address is here.

I have an uncle who champions Marx and out of love I can't help but try to convert him at Thanksgiving dinner. I try to remember that Jesus tried to help everybody out of love and they killed him so I suppose that's why you don't talk about politics with relatives. But seriously! I can't even get my mind around the idea of championing out right socialism. If you rejected original sin the argument would work easier, but the story they cite is a prime example of original sin. I can at least comprehend those who just want a little socialism here and there under the title "advanced capitalism".

I find the historical evolution funny: Somehow we go from bartering to legal tender to abolishing the whole system as if abolishing the system makes man smarter. It's like a little kid who is given a spoon to eat his food with but decides that the environment would be saved the metal to make the spoon so he will use his fingers. Abolishing age old systems does not make you better. I can just imagine how eloquently C.S. Lewis would have given the last 3 lines... I suppose economic insanity was a bit before his time. I wish I was a genius sometimes. And rich so that I could help people intellectually and economically. I could be the ultimate good samaritan if original sin didn't make me greedy and self-loving. God loves us so much he doesn't give us money.