Orthodox & Heterodox

I've gone to This Side of Glory!

2005-09-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Whee! Are we getting tired of this yet? Our Blog Guy fixed all of the paths and whatnot, though we're still working on bringing back all the images. But it mostly works, so meet me back over at www.this-side-of-glory.com or click on THIS LINK if you're one of those that would rather click than type.

I've moved back!

2005-08-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

Well, hopefully not permanently, but we've had some of those oh-so-comical technical difficulties. We get more of those than the average bloggers because we're ambitious and we run our own server. And when I say "we're ambitious" I mean of course that Greg's ambitious, and when I say "we run our own server," I mean that Greg runs it and I -- after finding out that it wasn't actually going to serve me anything -- lost interest and went and made cookies.

Shame on me for still knowing so little about the technological wonderland that surrounds us. But shame on Greg for knowing nearly everything and still thinking he could speak perfect Unix. Because as I understand it, the reason that my blog and the other five or six that we host went bye-bye is because when he typed a certain command, he inserted one space that wasn't supposed to be there, and zing! without any of those "Do you really want me to [do whatever stupid thing you accidentally asked it to do], you carbon-based clotpoll?" messages that we simple Mac- and PC-users have come to love, it went right ahead and erased the entire directory.

So I'm a lowly blogger.com-head again for a while. I'll miss posting pictures and whatnot, but other than that, I'll probably survive. I still think this is the curse of having announced my one-year blogoversary. Oooo, creepy.

I've moved!

2005-02-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

All righty. The new-and-improved site is finally ready. So... Orthodox-Heterodox is dead; This Side of Glory is alive.

Meet me over there at www.this-side-of-glory.com (or just click on the link, if you're tired.)

See you there.

Round robins (and mockingbirds)

2005-02-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

I'm home this Sunday morning because the hubby took ill. So he's upstairs sleeping the Sleep of The Thera-Flued, and I thought I would peruse the Ortho-blogosphere.

This post from Dr. Mark Reynolds includes a fine three-point refutation of the dumb comparison between gay marriage and interracial marriage. I especially liked his last point:
The great Western religions, one source of knowledge about the world, believe homosexuality is morally wrong. Some forms of religion in the USA believed inter-racial marriage was a sin. There is no comparison between the universal nature of the first belief and the deviant nature of the second. The first belief is grounded in the religious structure of marriage. The second was a foolish prohibition that did not even exist at the time of Jesus Christ.

It's ridiculous that you even have to argue these points. One of the ploys of the enemies of godliness (of all political and social stripes) is to propose patent nonsense so long that you have to clearly enunciate why it's incorrect. The reason that this turns out to be difficult is that it's inaccurate even to argue about nonsense. The first and best response is to just dismiss it. To go back and forth with it eventually gives it an aura of plausibility.

Huw takes time to mess with mockingbirds
So I whistled. Just one note (in the right key) for two seconds: Tooo!. Then I did it again. Tooo! Nearly instantly I heard the call echoed above in the trees. Tooo! ... Soon the whole flock was bouncing up and down in their touchdown dance. And I was laughing. Tooo! Tooo!Tooo! Tooo! Tooo!Tooo!

Mischief.

I formatted a whole flock of mockingbirds with a mockingbird virus.

Now I want to try that too, or rather Tooo. You can never play too(o) many headgames with our fellow creatures, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks to Orthodixie for pointing to a new Orthodox site I hadn't known about.
On this coming Sunday, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, who were slain by the Communists.

This sobering account of the attacks against clergy in Russia under Communism. This is grim stuff. But keep it in mind the next time you hear that Ronald Reagan was overstating things when he called the old USSR "an evil empire."

Checked into Morning Coffee this morning, which I don't do nearly as often as I should. I was really touched by the courage and the humility of the three posts I read (blogger wouldn't let me link them individually, so you'll just have to read back). I know several people right now who are fighting against chronic pain and two whose illnesses are probably terminal. It's obvious that it changes everything. I could say more, but readers should discover for themselves.
God is good...and all that wonderful theology that could be discussed will have to be done on someone else's blog. And insightful comments on current events will have to be written by someone else. And re-tellings of exciting excerpts of domestic bliss will need to be found elsewhere.

The Catechumen from Oxford talks about dealing with the balance between theology and worship.
So, how can I read theology everyday, discuss it, write papers on it, and think about it for hours on end without getting fed up with it? Sunday. It is that one glorious day each week where all of my theology reading and intellectual pursuit are put aside and I get to pray to God uninhibited by my own stupidity. I am [still] awed by the beauty of the Liturgy, the enveloping chants, the incense, the call and response of the priest to his people.

Amen and amen. Makes me wish that I had been able to make it this Sunday. But Greg is up at last, so it's time for me to see what I can do.

State of the Union address

2005-02-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't mean to leave things so long that I would be having the State of the Union address going on, but I did, so I might as well blog.

(But first, the dog is restless. And with all due regard to Mr. President, the dog's business most certainly takes priority. Plus, I'm recording ...)

***
Okay, that took longer than I thought. Not my fault ... the dog insisted that I get a wine spritzer. ("What? More wine? Oh, Clemmie, what a bad doggie.")

But the funny thing is that you can hear the important part from downstairs. Yes, the major player is ... the applause. It went on and on and on. I thought for a minute he had shown Ted Kennedy a certain purple-dyed finger.

I forgot this about the SofU speech -- it's a big Applause-o-Matic thing. Afterwards, every news show will have the count. How much applause, how many standing ovations and were they partial (usually Republicans, of course) or total and so on.

Ha! Some poor schmuck mistook a pause for an applause cue. He was clapping the heck out it before he realized that he was clapping for something bad. Face! (as the surfer-guys used to say)

Okay, here's another new tactic -- the Democrats are harrumphing and booing as Bush talks about what's wrong with Social Security. I'm certain the news guys will spend some time on that. It's very British really, if you've ever tuned in the Parliament, but it seems like bad form to me. Plus, they're harrumphing about him saying what's already wrong with the system. You never know if the LeftLoons are swooning over that ("All RIGHT! Taking a brave stand at last! Listen to Kennedy harrumph, by golly!"), but it makes them sound just like they're at war with the facts, if you ask me.

(snicker) I'm sorry, but the sideshow of the speech is better than the speech. They show individual senators from time to time, and you could judge party with no help whatsoever.

Democrat: pissy/depressed/constipated
Republican: beaming/inspired/slightly insane
Orrin Hatch: asleep

Well, he moved on to preserving man/woman marriage and the Dems are sitting on their shiftless butts for the standing ovation. What a bunch of wienies.

He's making some noises about judicial activism, but it's always on the way to making another amendment. Heck, let's legislate against judicial activism. Let's put three-strikes to use where it'll do some good, for heaven's sake.

Okay, I didn't even hear the point, but he said "... African-American men and women." And so of course, yep. Bingo. The Dems are standing up. 'Bout time. I figured some of them were just trying to keep their rears from falling asleep.

All right, we're already on to the "protect our children" stuff. Now begins a small laundry list of all kinds of good little ideas that shouldn't really even have to be worth a mention. So why bring them up now? Well, it lets the Dems stand up again. And it keeps stupid people from saying later, "He didn't say ANYthing about our children!! Doesn't he CARE??"

As the Fox commentator said beforehand, the problem with these speeches is that they are naturally so formulaic. And I'll add another thing: they're pie-crust promises (as Mary Poppins said.) Easily made, easily broken:

Bush: I would like this great country to finally recognize the need for every child in our schools to have access to no-carb, calorie-free banana splits WITH multiple cherries on a bi-weekly basis.

Floor erupts in applause. Dems look like they want to steal something. Orrin Hatch snorts out loud.

Not to say that Bush doesn't mean any of this. I think he does. But with the Democrats about to sail off the end of the flat world they live in, does anybody really expect them to act like rational human beings? If Bush announced that he's found a way to drop money out of the sky, they'd shriek about the ecological implications.

Oh major FACE. Joe Biden started a wrongful clap when the camera was on him. Dork.

You know, I like Dick Cheney, but he always looks like a guy who's waiting for the Preparation H to kick in.

And since I'm pointing out details, I'll just say that I must unfortunately agree with the critics that Bush needs to say 'nu-clear' and not 'nu-cular'. Other than that, he's perfect.

Okay, bang-o. We finally got a mention of the Iraqi vote. And yep, some of the senators really do have purple fingers. God bless 'em.

Addendum to Mr. President: It's 'recognize', not 'reckanize'. Other than that, ... y'know.

Bush says that Iraqis have earned the respect of us all. Damn straight.

We have an Iraqi voter in the audience ... WITH the purple finger, of course. And the bad dye job. What is it about Arab women and bad henna hair?

Okay, Cheney really looks like a guy with a problem. I expect him to make those 'speed it up' gestures to Bush any minute.

Uh-oh. Double whammy. Shot of Hillary, looking like death. Shot of Kerry, looking like the undead. Okay, now back to the living.

The troops are great ... applause ... how about those Iraqis ... applause. You know, I have to admire these guys. It's actually quite a workout to clap that much. Try it next time you go see a show. I could see the best production on earth and they're not going to get more than a minute and a half outta me.

And we're introducing parents of a Marine killed in duty. Oh heck, the Iraqi voter is hugging the mom. And the mom gave her her son's dog-tags. All right, I'm sorry if that was scripted. I'm really touched anyway. And of course, the applause. Well, I'll just keep typing and then you'll know how long it went on. Yep, still going .... good. Some things are just good.

That's it for the speech. And right away ... yep, we're getting the count from the Fox guys. Sixty-five interruptions for applause. Bush is shaking hands. And, oh hey, Hatch woke up. Good, good.

***
Oh jeez. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... Harry (@%$!!) Reid and Nancy (@%&*#$%@^!!!!!) Pelosi are going to set me straight on how Bush is full of it and I desperately need the DNC.

Harry: I knew a little boy once who was good without making a big deal out of it [Um, what?] Bush's policies have added much to the deficit. [No argument there. Bush spends like a Democrat. But the Democrats have a problem like that? I've never understood that.] We need to invest in a Marshall plan for America. National investment created the intenet. [??? Oh, I gotta check that one out on factcheck.org] Health care costs have shot up. We need to make them affordable. Good new jobs, health care... these things matter. Unfortunately, much of what the president talked about doesn't matter. It's just like Groundhog Day. [???!!] And now, I'm going to spin some ridiculous lies to try like mad to scare gullible morons out of doing anything reasonable about Social Security. [Okay, so I'm paraphrasing.]

Harry is trying to look like he's about to read me a bedtime story. It's a big mistake. I'm afraid one misplaced camera shot will show that he's got pointy teeth.

Nancy: Children, America, prayers, America, values, children. Um, ... oh and our troops. Yes, our TROOPS. And ... and patriotism. I love patriotism. I've ordered up a six-pack of patriotism just for the weekend. I'm so patriotic and normal sometimes I mistake myself for a Republican. Okay, are you fooled yet? Good. Then we'll begin. Listen to me carefully. Look into my enormous strangely-wide-open eyes and my enormous shock of hair and listen... you feel sleepy. Bush isn't helping enough with security. We either need more troops or less troops or something. But Bush is bad. Bush is baaad. We here at the DNC see allll kinds of security stuff that we just care about so much we could cry. We aren't just saying this because if Bush said frick we would say frack. No, dang it. We -- me and Groundhog Harry here -- we are incredibly sincere. I can't blink my eyes right now. I don't know why. They just won't shut. I think I got hairspray in my eyes. I hate my hair. I wonder what color it would be if I didn't dye it. I wonder if the Iraqi lady can get me some dye. ...

Oops. Sorry, I kind of drifted off. I was looking at her hair and then ... well, anyway, I'm turning it over to the talking heads now. Clemmie is looking at me and ... what's that, girl? Another spritizer? Oh, you bad, bad dog.

Gloating aside

2005-01-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, with great effort I wrest myself away from dancing on the graves of the doom-sayers, because it's worth rising above for just long enough to note the voters of Iraq:

* Threatened with "a blood bath" from the insurgents, they came to vote in the millions

"I am not afraid," said Samir Khalil Ibrahim. "This is like a festival for all Iraqis."

* Instead of keeping a low profile, some wore their festival clothes. They danced. /They shared chocolates. They celebrated.

"This is a wedding for all Iraqis. I congratulate all Iraqis on their newfound freedom and democracy," said Jaida Hamza, dressed in a black Islamic veil that also hid her face.

* Told that anyone with the dyed finger that marked a voter would be shot, they waved them around proudly.

Samir Hassan, 32, who lost his leg in a car bomb blast in October, was determined to vote. "I would have crawled here if I had to. I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace," he said, leaning on his metal crutches, determination in his reddened eyes.

We've underestimated them. The left has for sure, but I think the right has as well. (And I did too.)

Baghdad's mayor was overcome with emotion by the turnout of voters at City Hall, where he said thousands were celebrating.

"I cannot describe what I am seeing. It is incredible. This is a vote for the future, for the children, for the rule of law, for humanity, for love," Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters.

More victories

2005-01-30T20:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks from this news like we've taken over a few other hostile territories

The French government, which was one of the fiercest opponents of the US-led invasion of Iraq, hailed the vote as a "great success for the international community" and called the high voter turnout "good news".

"France never stopped saying, in unison with the international community, that this was a crucial step," a government spokesman said.

In Berlin, the German government hailed the election as "an important step on the path to construction of democratic structures."

I think we have passed the global test, Senator Kerry.

Election day in Iraq!!

2005-01-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Oh my gosh!

Oh for heaven's sake. Can we re-do our own election day, JUST so we can vote out John Kerry by an even bigger margin? What an idiot.

Karl's baby!

2005-01-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

Definitely a miracle, or even a concatenation of miracles, like a Celtic knot. Name her after St. Patrick.

Phillip of the Fountain Pen

2005-01-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

I met a strange guy in the Starbucks in St. Joseph.

I went into town on an errand and finished up by kicking back with a nonfat half-caf. I had done a little journal-writing time and was settling down to read Abp. Averky Taushev's book on the Apocalypse when a young man came and stood at my table. He had a pad of paper on a clipboard, and he wrote in neat handwriting:

Greetings sister,

May I sit?

I immediately gestured him to the chair in front of me, more out of awkwardness than anything. He's deaf? He's soliciting? He's a deaf evangelist solicitor? Good grief, what a girl goes through for a decent cup of coffee in this town.

He set to writing again, which gave me a little chance to observe him. Early twenties with a beard ... but, y'know, not weird-looking. Not hippie-esque, nor severely buttoned-down. No particular garb or uniform. Not dirty and not obsessively clean. No piercings or tattoos visible. So, what ...?

He wrote with his blue fountain pen:

My name is Phillip. I saw you writing. I see Grace handling the written Word + so came. Do you know what thing it is to write?

Too much information, not enough sense. And he apparently heard my name from the barrista calling it out. Curse the worldly vanity that brings a person to a place where they announce your name to give you your coffee. But let's see what of this we can work with here. "Are you deaf?" I asked, motioning to my ear. "Can you speak?"
He half-smiled and wrote: I can speak.
Okay, now we know that. But ... "I don't understand," I said, pointing to his previous message. He wrote some more:

To write, do you know what it is to write? That is a good practice. The Word is God. John 1.1.

All righty. "I'm reading about the Apocalypse," I said, pointing to my book. They may have seemed like a disjointed reply, but (a) I had a feeling that wouldn't be a problem to him, and (b) if the next question was going to be something about where I was on my Walk with The Lord, I wanted to indicate my high level of spiritual advancement so he could leave me the heck alone. I read books, buddy. Besides, I didn't care much for the whole weird "what it is to write" topic. His answer wasn't much help.

If the world ended would we know it?

Well, um, yeah we would. But I can't say that. So I said, "That depends on the world." Whatever that means.

Matthew 24:3 The apostles ask Jesus for a sign for His coming + the end of the world. Why would they ask this, do you supose?

"Probably because they wanted a sign? Why don't you speak?"

Because I know what it is to write. This is the daily bread + the flesh of Jesus Christ. Here I measure my Lord between us in holy fellowship.

If it were holy fellowship, my coffee wouldn't be getting cold. "Fellowship? But not by talking?"

The bread is the writing + the speaking is the wine. Both are found @ Table. Yet if man drink + not have bread in his stomach is he not drunken?

Did you ever notice how crazy people make you think you're crazy? Writing is bread and talking is wine and if you speak without writing you'll get drunk. What? I decided to carry on by writing my responses as well. Here's our "conversation":

[me] Isn't it difficult to do this? Don't you ever speak to people?

I do speak yes. Yet is was not the speaking that opened a way to you. You wrote + this is God. The Word is @ one right hand, this is the manifestation of the Lord.

Note to self: journal-writing in the St. Jo Starbucks -- bad idea. Let's change the subject.

I like to write, yes. Are you a Christian?

Not I but you have said, + if you call me a Christian then I shall glorify the Name of Jesus Christ in this name. What does Christian mean but one "acting like Christ?"

Weird response. Who's surprised? But meanwhile, I had figured out how to ask him something I really wanted to know without antagonizing him.

Do you have peace, or are you in turmoil? (I ask because some people who set ascetic practices for themselves are in turmoil.)

I could have said neutral things and gotten out of there, or just said nothing at all and left. But I thought, "No, he's not way-crazy, he's ... middlin'-crazy. And lost. And weird. No one is going to talk to him. Is there a way to get real information to him? Does he know he's lost?"

No, this is my peace. My seeking is in the Lord. In Him do I rest, yet take up my cross + follow Him. This is the faith that lead Abram out of the nations, the faith that gave the law to Moses, how David ruled his Kingdom + how the apostles fellowshipped w/ each other. This is my practice of faith, active + living.

I don't want to sound naive, but I was impressed with that answer. It could've been said by a fool-for-Christ. Still, it was troubling to think that this person with his strange mentality was going at the Scriptures without a paddle ... without a spiritual guide.

Do you have any church or place where you study and pray with others?

What is the church? What does the Bible say of it? When Paul writes an assembly, does he not write the city? In Revelation, John writes to the angel over a city! Here we are, on the ground of St. Joseph we are even now in service. Do you want to pray, sister?

Oh dear.

No, thank you, though I respect what you've said. I'm Orthodox -- though we know that God is everywhere, yet to me that is His best expression on earth.

But speaking of earthly matters, I have to go. My dog is outside, and she's getting cold.

True enough. Can't have a cold dog. Nosirree.

Blessed be Grace in the Name of Jesus Christ. Peace be w/ you.

And God bless you, Phillip.

I was a little relieved that he had no problem with me going. I asked if I could take our written conversation and as he got it together, he wrote a last message that I didn't read till I got in the car.

The communion lives!

***
I mulled all this over all the way home, and I still can't quite make heads or tails out of it. No doubt most people would have walked out. Part of the reason I didn't was self-indulgence. I've been intrigued with people's mental shifting sands, with the mental place where reality recedes without you realizing it. But also, I think I hung in there just to say that one word to him -- Orthodox. It's my way of leaving a hint. Go find out about this place. See if your studies and your world make sense there.

I don't mean to sound so Ortho-centric. A person just goes with what they know. I had my confused stage in college. I wasn't at Phillip's level, but I was in a bad way. And I was born again and had a Bible, by Jiminy, so I was constantly finding out wonderful things that no one else had ever found out and needing to separate myself more and more from other people. It's called prelest -- you think you're getting better and better when you're actually getting worse and worse. I don't know where it would've ended if the Orthodox Church hadn't come to the rescue. (Almost literally, but that's something for another post.)

The communion does live.

Humble, yet bold

2005-01-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

I have been having a hard time keeping up with the Orthodox Convert list-serv that I subscribe to, but I'm loathe to delete the digests that have piled up in my e-mail inbox. Every time I finally open up one and start scrolling down, it's filled with goodies like this one.

An inquirer asked, "How can a saint like Paul expect to go to heaven and receive the crown of justice, while monk Ephraim of Philotheou says he expects to go to hell? Isn't this a conflict?"

I think this is a really good question. One of the shockers about Orthodoxy to most American Christians is the emphasis on podvig -- spiritual struggle. The language in some of the services -- especially the Lenten ones -- as well as much that you could read from monastics can easily confuse folks raised with comfy hymns like "Blessed Assurance" and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". In truth, after living Orthodox for over 20 years, I think I know roughly how I would answer something like this, but I couldn't have put it as well as Reader Timothy Copple, who replied:

The paradox of the Faith is that we on one hand see our sins and know they have the power to drag us down and condemn us to hell, but we have the confidence in God's mercy that we can be saved. So both concepts are indeed compatable and often mentioned side by side.

After listing an example or two from liturgies and contrasting them with psalms, he continues:

St. Paul is emphasizing that his and everyone's hope is on the mercy of God in Jesus Christ (everyone who loves His appearing) while Ephraim is speaking of what his own works can accomplish. Based on us, all we can expect is hell. Based on God's mercy, if we humbly rely upon that and guide our lives by it, all we can hope for is salvation. What the good monk is actually doing is proclaiming his reliance on the great mercy of God. He is just coming at it from the other direction.

Chicken soup of the damned

2005-01-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, my chicken soup was making a really eerie noise in the microwave. It's a wholesome, Republican chicken soup -- homemade, relatively lo-cal and only in the fridge a couple days. And yet, a minute or so into the zapping process, it started to wheeze.

Seriously. It was making this low "wheeeee" noise that made Clementine actually move out of a perfectly good sun-spot and investigate.

It could be that the potatoes or something had air that had gotten trapped and the heating process was making it seep out. But I think we could also say that my chicken soup was moaning like something in an Edgar Allen Poe story.

I'm going to go ahead and eat this, because I'm a 21st century type of gal, (and I'm hungry) but if anything happens, you'll know where to direct the SciFi Channel investigation team.

I'm kidding (most likely), but meanwhile, this post from Huw reminds us of the kind of thing that "educated" superstitious people can make themselves believe. These are usually the same people who just can't buy Virgin birth or Creationism because those things are too implausible. Don't get me started.

Apologies, if any are necessary

2005-01-23T15:40:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to say sorry, sorry, sorry about not blogging for some time. I've been kept busy with work and haven't found the right kind of time. It's not that there isn't any time at all. Just the right sort of time. I could divide out time into quite a few categories and explain what I mean. But that sounds like something that's an entry all its own, and I'm looking forward to it.

Wow. Wow. Ow.

2005-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

Went to see "Pink Martini" in concert with the KC Symphony Orchestra last night -- what a high-energy, power-packed totally enjoyable performance. And boy, do my knees hurt.

Pink Martini is a group that's hard to put an accurate description to. Their Web-site describes them as "Somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brasilian marching street band and Japanese film noir," which might say it as well as anything. It's a 12-member group -- 11 mostly-musicians and one mostly-singer -- that add a fabulously executed, incredibly scintillating Latin rhythm and pulse to an eclectic mix of music. Some classical (like Ravel's "Bolero"), some 50s and 60s American and international ("Brazil", "Andalusia" and a particularly creepy version of "Que Sera Sera"). (For a quick sample, I would download the video of their French song "Sympathique" on this page. If you remember your high school French you'll get a kick out of this lover's lament: "Je ne veux pas travailler, je ne veux pas dejeuner, je veux seulement oublier ... et puis je fume." But I think you can enjoy the song almost as much without understanding a word.)

When they perform in conjunction with a pared-down symphony orchestra, it's a pretty good bet that a good time will be had by all. It's just too bad about my knees.

The Midland Theater is a vintage Kansas City theater. The baroque-as-hell interior fal-de-ral is not to be believed, and it speaks of a sweeter and better time when ladies and gentlemen were aesthetic, refined and -- apparently -- tiny. Those seats would have worked perfectly for someone with 9" hips and a telescoping femur. Such a person could sit the night away in perfect pleasure.

Then there are the rest of us. Once I wedged myself into the seat, I realized that the best ploy was not to get up and let the restored blood flow inform my brain about the pain. But there was nothing good to do about the lack of leg-room. There was slightly more room on either side of the seat in front of me than in the middle, so I could have splayed my legs far apart. And, country girl that I am, I would've done it if it wouldn't have cut so much into Greg's leg-room. Matters weren't helped by the tall man sitting in the seat in front, who had to winch his femurs into his available space with enough force to push the seat-back a little further into my space. In the end, I figured that once I had adopted my viewing position, I would have to totally ignore all nerve impulses for the duration of the show. (My mental abilities -- what can I say? I scare myself sometimes.)

It's an homage to Pink Martini that I could accomplish this. I had my share of practice in England, which of course has the vintage small-butt, no-leg theater seats as well. But in the end, when you finally arise ... Well, "arise" isn't the right word. When you un-wedge yourself, all the stricken regions chime in as one.

So culture has its price. My hips have forgiven me. My knees are telling me to rent videos and stay home.

In search of the Religious Left

2005-01-17T19:29:00.000-08:00

Well, it was bound to happen. The Democrats are officially trying to crank up the volume on That Old Time Religion.

On Wednesday, the very liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) went to the National Press Club and proclaimed the need for Democrats to talk more about values and said it was useful that a Democratic candidate "talked about God."

And haven't I been saying that I would really love if what came out of the last election was the beginnings of detente between the liberal Democrats and the religious Democrats who have been marginalized and silenced for years? I'm conservative myself, and likely to remain so, but lately I've seen the value in having a healthy opposing viewpoint. Except the liberal left isn't healthy. They've been trying to draw more and more sustenance from less and less substance and seem to be going insane, like someone who has a bag over their face.

I hope that doesn't seem like an unkind metaphor. It might just be wishful thinking. I've been wishing that someone would put a bag over Ted Kennedy's face for many years.

Oh. That really was unkind. Oops. Sorry.

Prayer for the victims of abortion

2005-01-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

January 24 is the 32nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and there is a March for Life planned in Washington DC. Orthodixie will be there, and for those who can't, he includes a link to the service his mission will do.

... we humbly pray, according to Thy unfailing promise: grant the inheritance of Thy kingdom to the multitude of spotless infants who have been cruelly murdered in the abortuaries of this land; for Thou art the resurrection and the life and the repose of all Thy servants and of these innocents, O Christ our God

I can't be there, but I will pray with them at noon. Who knows how many little chisel strokes it takes to make an impression, but I can provide one of them at any rate.

Thou shalt not test the Lord, thy God without a control group

2005-01-13T17:01:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to believe that this story was a hoax. I wish someone would tell me it was.

Doesn't it seem like there's an awfully thin line here between studying faith and punishing faith?

This 'n that

2005-01-13T14:43:00.000-08:00

Things of interest ... to me, at any rate:

* Fergie -- probably voted America's Favorite Royal and England's Least Favorite Royal -- says we should give Prince Harry a break over the swastika thing. I agree, though it's always amazing to me that public figures who live their lives in a really brightly lit goldfish bowl will show these enormous lapses of judgment. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that Harry really identifies with the neo-Nazis, so ... move along, folks. Nothing to see here. Just a prince in a bad costume.

* They think they've found Leonardo da Vinci's studio. I'm with this blogger -- I'm not sure that the discovery tells us anything new about da Vinci, but it does offer a place of pilgrimage for the newly enraptured. Such is da Vinci's star status these days. (sigh) Well, I try to remember that Leo didn't have anything to do with writing that stupid book.

* On a related note, seeing a Raphael exhibit made me think about the Big Three of the Renaissance and how they seemed to personify such different stereotypes of the artistic temprament (all of this IMHO, as if that needed to be said.):

-- DaVinci: the Renaissance man, if ever there was one. Painter, inventor, architect, botanist, engineer, blah blah blah. His reputation probably doesn't have quite as much to do with his paintings as with himself. Art seems to have been just an excuse for more exploration, information and expression. (In this piece, you can almost see him having this intense dialogue with the precise qualities of women's hair, rather than just finishing the sketch.)
-- Raphael: the pretty boy. Talented, artistic, good at parties ... but with delicate features and fine sensibilities. Of the three, his real estate value is probably the lowest now, since everyone associates him with the cliche of sweet-faced pink Madonna and Child art. But he was one who helped make it a cliche, and probably would have taken it to a higher level if he hadn't died at age 37. Still, he managed to give us the newest over-exposed art detail to hit the kitsch market.
-- Michelangelo: tortured loner. Unlike daVinci, art was his reason for being; unlike Raphael, you couldn't take him anywhere and not tick someone off. Does it give you just an idea of how messed up he was that the image of St. Bartholemew's flayed skin in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment was a self-portrait? He lived to be an amazing 89 years old but never married, giving modern sophists plenty of opportunity to speculate that he was gay.

* And speaking of outing historic figures, there's a new book coming out arguing that Lincoln was bi-sexual. Oy vey. For all I know he was. But since he didn't pen a document to that effect in front of witnesses -- or perhaps put on a questionable demonstration -- I don't see how anyone could say for sure (nor am I quite sure I understand what difference it makes). Like the Gay Michelangelo Theory, it gets tossed out as historical fact and any resistance is deemed homophobia. As if it were only possible for heterosexuals to have bias.

* Well ... crap. I guess I have to watch Barbara Walters interview George Bush. But land! I can't watch Barbara's interviews. I don't know which is worse -- her widiculously distwacting speech impediment or her phony "I'm so damn sincere I could die" expression. Actually, I think it would guarantee higher ratings if they let it leak that he was going to let her get three questions in and then break an egg right on her forehead. C'mon, you KNOW you'd want to see that. I bet you'd get a whole different expression for once.

London photos

2005-01-11T18:29:00.000-08:00

For those who haven't heard me blab enough about the London trip (or for those who have and would have rather see something than hear me go on), here's a link to the Yahoo slideshow of the photos. (Click on the button that says "slideshow".)

I'm not in any of them, but then that's the disadvantage (or advantage, depending on how you look at it) of being the one with the camera.

Tsunami burn-out

2005-01-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

Frederica on the problem with the tsunami reporting and disaster reporting in general.

The numbers seemed not just unreal, but random. Why not 500,000, or only 50? How big would the number have to be before I could register it? And, even if I did, what difference would it make.

I agree completely. When I wrote this entry about being overwhelmed with the magnitude of the disaster and my relative inability to do anything worthwhile, the death toll was only 11,000. That's not to say that we should ignore the plight of those affected, but which one of us has a context to understand what it means for0 140,000 people to die from one disaster? The news media consider themselves the all-seeing, non-emotional eye, but they don't stop to consider the impact of bringing up-to-the-minute technicolor carnage and death into my living room and then cutting to a commercial for softer bathroom tissue.

This isn't a rant against them though. I don't know what the perfect answer is. I would be heartily grateful for an attitude amongst journalists that acknowledged that there are life and death questions that we can't know, even if we know the precise death toll. And for those who survive the unthinkable, there is a life that goes on after the camera stops rolling ... and until these things happen to us, there is part of the story that none of us quite has words to tell.

But I don't imagine that seismic point-of-view shift will come any time soon. Just something to shoot for.

Good to see the white, white ice of home

2005-01-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

Well, imagine my guffaws of laughter when it turned out upon my first sight of dear old Cowtown in two weeks that it was covered in ice and was just nasty cold out.

You can't imagine that?

Bingo.

It was a cold reception for sure. I had something more in mind like one of those brisk winter days filled with the bright cheering sunlight that I've missed so much. But my order must've gotten lost in the mail, (much in the same way as the car key my husband sent to England and the post cards I misaddressed to family. I'm prepared to be philosophical about the latter, but I really could've used the former, especially when my flight was so delayed that the rental car place Greg had reserved a car from as a backup shut down for the night. A virulent pox take Enterprise Rental. May all their carburetors rot forever.)

Last day at the internet cafe

2005-01-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to try to sum up the differences and impressions of being a short-timer American in London, and now as luck would have it, I'll have to try to distill it all down to a short enough entry that I can be out in a half-hour or so and back to my hotel so my mother and sister won't worry.

They shouldn't really, but I did promise them I'd try to be back by 11pm. But I don't feel afraid of being by myself on the short walk back to our little hotel room. This area of London is well-travelled by other pedestrians and only seems to get more so as the night progresses. I'm sure it must winnow off at some point, but we've never been up that late.

And in any case, London on the whole seems to be a pedestrian's paradise. It has that in common with the bigger, older cities in the U.S. -- New York and Chicago most especially. Whereas you're a lowly wanderer in the desert if you're getting around by foot in most cities and a downright freak if you're doing it in Southern California (I once had a stranger ask if my car was broken when I decided to take a walk in Garden Grove) -- in a city like London, you're in good company. Lots and lots of good company. There is something grounding about getting around so much just under the power of your own two feet, and of course it's invigorating for body and soul. The temperature has been in a range from about 35-55 degrees Fahrenheit (my guess. They give all the temperatures in Celsius and I don't have time for such nonsense.), and it's just lovely to go around in a coat and scarf, just one of the masses going here and there in a city that has seen nobles and ignobles treading its stones for centuries.

It's a hard city, to be sure, and I don't say I could keep from feeling some misery if I was here for a prolonged period. The skies are constantly gray, rain always seems likely and sunshine is fitful and noncommittal. Those crowds can't help but seem faceless and drone-like from time to time. And the beautiful stone and brick that is everywhere -- in the cobblestones and paving stones that make up every street and out of which the ubiquitous multi-storied Victorian buildings are made -- could seem cold and make you feel friendless if you looked at nothing else for long.

But there's also a wonderful smell of wet stone and earth that permeates the streets and the tube stations. There's a naturalness to walking along with everyone else walking along, trying to get in and out of the tube stations in some kind of mild-mannered but no-nonsense hurry because ... well, because there's so damn many people, and the only way we'll all get wherever it is we're trying to get is if we all keep moving at more or less the same pace.

With that in mind, I've thought to myself that this would be a terrible place to be handicapped. There's almost no provision made in London's driving pace for people that are in wheelchairs or who just can't stride out in a military way.

As to whether it is any less harsh on those who can't keep up in other ways, I couldn't say. I haven't seen a single homeless person in all of the miles and miles of London streets we've covered on foot and by bus. I haven't had a single person come up asking for money. I've heard from our professor, he said only that the city had dealt with the homeless problem very harshly because it was getting out of control. But I don't know much about it myself, so I won't hazard a guess.

But all of this isn't getting me any closer to my sum-up, so let me try my favorite old bullet-point format for other noteworthy comments:

* Anti-Americanism ... what Anti-Americanism? -- This roving reporter can faithfully inform the reading public that I haven't seen anything of the much-ballyhooed English loathing for all things American. To be sure, I've heard an anti-Bush remark or two, but nowhere near the amount of heartfelt grief they give to Tony Blair or the royals. And a short compilation I read of P.J. O'Rourke's impressions as an American in England corroborated my feelings, further remarking that whatever Yank-loathing was supposedly out there couldn't be any worse than what he had experienced during the Reagan years. I think part of the reason that the English aren't still in a righteous fit of pique with us over our audacity in electing Bush is that they simply can't spare the time. The city is rife with nationalities and ethnicities coming and going about their business. To remember always to particularly sneer and glare at American tourists would take more work than I think they're prepared to put into it, and most likely they're so pleased to encounter someone who at least marginally speaks the same language as themselves that all other differences sort of pale by comparison.

* Tubin' -- I am absolutely going to miss the London transport system. Well, no. I have to be very specific. I will miss the dizzying complexity and relative efficacy of the London underground. That they were able to pull this off in the 1860's seems to my naive heart to be one of the great wonders of engineering in this busy world, and one that I know every large city in America would love to emulate. On the other hand, I don't think much at all about the buses. The bus drivers and conductors seem to range only from sullen to mean. My mother and I had one bus pull out almost literally from under our feet as we were stepping onto it and another pointedly and ridiculously ignore our signals to pull over at the bus stop. Those may just be a couple of bad experiences, but who needs it?

* Pardon me, waiter, but there's a toad in this hole -- the English food. Well, the English food. It's better than it has been. Unfortunately, since it has been downright diabolical in the past, to have it better than that still means it's pretty bad overall. We've had some lovely meals, but we've had some rude surprises. If you ever come here, stick to fish and chips. It's brilliant.

* If it's broke, don't fix it -- I'm definitely not going to miss how often things in London are broken. All things mechanical and logistical go awry, but the whole area seems to be about 33% likely to be as close to broken as fixed at any given time. It teaches you not to count on public facilities, transportation or much of anything else, but it's incredibly frustrating at times.

* Who's rude? -- On the whole, I have to give high marks to the Londoners for courtesy. I don't know if it helps to have been in some of these busy cities and not have my expectations very high, but given the press of people going around by foot and vehicle, I've encountered almost no shoving, snippiness or horn-honking. On the other hand, there are little things I find amusing in the environs, especially given that Americans are the ones who are always accused of crassness. For example, the English don't call their public toilets bathrooms, restrooms or facilities. They call them toilets. That's accurate, no doubt, but it also seems funny to see signs in elegant locations that say "Toilets". It strikes an American as a little crude, and I can't bring myself, when those signs are absent in a restaurant, to go up to anyone and say, "Where's your toilets?" I'd think someone was a dolt if they asked me that. But then, I can't tell them that, or else I'm the dolt.

Oh well. Only two days left to work out quandaries like this. Tomorrow we go off to Stratford-on-Avon for the day, so if I don't intend to just hold it all day, I'll have to figure out how to walk up to someone who is probably a great Shakespearian actor or actress and ask them proudly, "Where's yur terlet?" I think I'll bring my cowboy hat along.

Plays and museums and wizards in short skirts

2005-01-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

Well! I was hoping that I would get more time to use the internet cafe here in the mall in London, but our tour group has been taking things at a somewhat frenetic pace, and this may be my best chance to do a little reporting from abroad.

It really has been just a fabulous trip. I wish I had a better word for it than that. "Fabulous" doesn't cut it. Krispy Kreme donuts are fabulous. Being first in line at the post office is fabulous. This should be something else ...

Well, I could absorb and spread some of the local patois and say it was brilliant. Those who watch Brit-TV know that this is a catch-all for anything good, and whereas it's been so devalued by overuse here that I heard one over-enthusiastic cooking show host refer to shitake mushrooms, lobster ravioli and onions in general as brilliant, it's still new to us. So my trip has been brilliant.

The tour group I'm with has given almost equal time to London's amazing museums and its amazing theater. It's like we're cramming for the big, BIG culture exam that's coming next week. Yesterday we went to the National Gallery and saw their exhibit of Raphael work with time at the end to peruse a collection of art that I could literally spend two weeks here dealing with. I really love the great art galleries, and this may be my new second-favorite (the Art Institute in Chicago is still number one, but it's close).

Today was a theater day, and so we toured backstage at the Royal Theatre on Drury Lane and saw Ian ("Gandalf") McKellan appearing in drag in a play for children.

What?

No, seriously. This is a thing that they tried to explain to me before I came, but it didn't make sense until I saw it. The English have a tradition of having plays they call pantomimes over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. These aren't true pantomimes -- people are allowed to talk. It's a play for children, usually one of the familiar stories (ours was "Aladdin") and including lots of the kind of broad slapstick and audience participation -- hissing at villians, responding on cue, doing a sing-along -- that children like. But at some point in its history, the actors began both camping it up and inserting the kind of sly jokes and double-entendres that the Big Folk liked to hear at the music halls. And somewhere along the line, it became the custom to have a major actor perform one of the woman's roles in fairly outrageous drag. And so the imperious and imposing Ian McKellan, without changing his booming, one-ring-to-bind-them voice one whit, appeared as the Widow Twankey and do a completely frightening amount of strutting, mincing and hip-swaying.

Brilliant.

Sort of says it, doesn't it?

Merrie Newe Yeare

2005-01-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

I won't try any more of the English accent typing, but I'm still in London. I'm at a better internet cafe than the previous one. (I didn't want to say anything, because I was brought up right, but the owner was chain-smoking in that particularly unapologetic European way, and if I had stayed in there another ten minutes, I could've tried blowing smoke rings every time I exhaled.)

This one is in Whitely's mall near our Bayswater tube station (I've been here, what, five days? And already I'm aware of my last tube station and my next tube station ... or, more to the point, one station that's supposed to work and the back-up you go to when it doesn't work. But more about that later.), and it has a lot of advantages -- a mouse and number pad being but two -- but it's a little noisy in here, so no one should expect great heaps of cleverness. Fair warning.

So Happy New Year to everyone! I hope 2005 started out well. Mine was just a little surreal, which guarantees that I'll remember it for a long time. I have an aversion to gatherings of more than about four people, so the usual New Year's festivities have never held much attraction for me. One of the couple in our travel group volunteered their room on the top floor for a group party. I thought they were a little insane to think they could fit twelve people in their room, because I was under the impression that all the rooms in our small hotel are as ludicrously small as the room I'm in with my mother and sister. That one is supposedly a threesome room, and it's smaller than a single Motel 6 room. No, that doesn't begin to say it. It's smaller than a Motel 6 bathroom. Honest to God, we have to choreograph our movements in order to get back and forth. ("All right, I need to go into the bathroom, so why don't you back up -- no, watch out, you'll sit on the dresser -- okay now, mom, I'm going to open the bathroom door, so why don't you go outside and I'll signal when there's room for you to come back in.") I have never seen such a tiny room. And semi-functional in most ways -- no shower curtain or place to hang one, explosive water pressure, beds from the most ascetic Orthodox monastery of St. Vrykias the Sleep-averse, etc. etc. etc. Not exactly a party location. And by the way, this is not a cheesy hotel. It's beautiful to look at from the outside, and on a street that makes you think instantly of Sherlock Holmes going along in a hansom cab. But it's undeniably seedy in some regards, and I wouldn't have thought that anyone's room would be the right venue for a New Year's bash.

As it turned out, their room had a darling little sitting room, and that room and the bedroom were much more spacious than the rooms lower down. I don't know if that had something to do with them being more expensive back in the days when it was all a boarding house, but it was a delightful surprise.

As was the party itself. In any group like this, you can expect to have some people who are more difficult to be around. Some folks' idea of pleasant discourse has less to do with dialogue than monologue, and those are usually the ones whose point of view is sought out the least. You feel guilty for avoiding them, but I've decided that it's okay to be happy when they absent themselves from ostensibly pleasant gatherings. And so it happened this time. My sister Lynn and I had rehearsed the type of pleasant remarks that we'd make to get out of the soiree after fifteen or twenty minutes, but without even realizing it, the hours sped by.

Champagne was handed around and Jim, one group leader, initiated a countdown based on his wristwatch, with all due apologies for the inaccuracy. That inaccuracy was made apparent a minute or so after we all clinked glasses and drank to the new year and each other (even sang "Auld Lang Syne" at the prodding of one hearty soul), only to have the fireworks begin then. Oops.

And for a brief time we all peeped out the window and oo'ed and ah'ed over what little we could see of the Trafalgar Square fireworks, until someone noticed that we could see them much better on television. It rankled a little to have to trade reality for video, but they were right of course. It was quite an impressive show, and I never would've seen that part.

I also never would've known that everyone kept two minutes of silence at 11:55 in recognition of the tsunami disaster. I didn't know that until I read it in this Drudge Report story.

How strange it is to be where there's so much going on, and still rely on the entertainment and communication crutches to experience it more fully. Well, that's the way it is I suppose.

Well, time to scoot. Our internet time is almost up, so I'll go do some Real Life things and see if I can find another window of time later on.

English blogging

2004-12-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

Well so, does this have an English accent? It should, but maybe it will come through stronger if I spell British -- apologise, centre, colour. There! Now you've got it, right?

I'm in an internet cafe in London. This is the much-anticipated 2-week museum and theatre(!) tour, but it got off to a strange start, and I was forced to be much more adventurous than I really had in mind.

I don't know if I explained way back when I first mentioned it that I'm tagging along on a trip that was advertised at the University of Nevada at Reno, and which my metriculating sister instantly loved and talked my mom into. Two weeks in London, seeing many plays (including two Shakespeares and one Andrew Lloyd Weber) and museums (including the Tate and the British Museum). Since I was coming from Kansas City instead of Reno, I was the odd man out, but we made plans to link up once we got to the Queen's country.

As it turned out, I'm here and all of them are still there. Their flight was cancelled, for reasons still unclear, and they won't be here till Tuesday morning.

Now, I wasn't thinking of being intrepid. I was sort of looking forward to being on a packaged tour where I don't have to think. But of course, there was nothing for it. I found the one working ATM out of a bank of duds (hint: look for the long line), and I figured out how to take the tube (that's 'subway' to you colonials) to Paddington Station, which I expected to have a bear in galoshes on the sign. No such luck.

At Paddington Station, things took a decided uptick. I spied a confectionery (Grace's brain: "confectionery" from the root "confectioner" as in powdered sugar = shoppe dispensing sweets) and nearby a stand selling pasties ("pasties" does NOT probably mean the wardrobe of a stripper, but meat and potatoes in a pastry envelope). At that point, being in London all by myself just seemed kind of wonderful, as I sat out at a table watching the trains come and go. Americans have many great qualities, but I don't know how we can consider ourselves a civilized people as long as we don't get chocolate and meat pies right. Chocolate should be milky. Meat pies should be ... well, it's hard to describe exactly. The meat isn't what you would call grade A prime. When they call it steak they're either being whimsical or intentionally misleading. It's sort of like a pot roast that you put a lot of stuff in and serve up very hot so no one can quite tell how old it is. But that's part of its charm really. This was so hot that when I blew on it, it steamed up my glasses. I opted to share tidbits of the crust with a solitary pigeon that was tut-tutting about.

For all I know I was marked as a tourist for all of those actions. For all I know the locals were making the secret hand signal of tourist-disgust for my gaucherie in sitting at the table (the others were unoccupied) or eating the pasty the wrong end up. Maybe the pigeon is right now telling the other pigeons in a clipped David Niven accent that a horrid twit of a girl fed him on the platform against all convention and propriety.

But that's probably why I had to do that part by myself. I assume everyone will know I'm a tourist.The English can spot an American a mile off in the dead of night with one eye closed. When the group gets here tomorrow, the group leader -- who is a frequent traveller -- will try to keep us from standing out. When I come back to the British Isles in May, my husband will give be horrified if he thinks I'm giving away our terrible secret.

But what the heck. I'm American, and they know I'm American, and the meat pasty was really good.

Well, time to log off and try to pretend that I understand how the money works.

The day after yesterday

2004-12-26T11:29:00.000-08:00

I wonder if anyone is going to compare the Christmas earthquake -- the worst earthquake on earth in the last 40 years according to these reports -- to the terrible forebodings of "The Day After Tomorrow." Well, maybe, but not for awhile. For now, there's still so much work to be done.

The reports of the devastation are incredible. The death toll is estimated to be over 11,000, and that's not even to mention the greater numbers injured and displaced, and the property damage. So much damage, so many people. It makes you feel terrible that you don't have more funds at your disposal. I'm sure there'll be a collection at church today (I'm staying home today for reasons I'll explain elsewhere), but even all of us pooling our resources seem insignificant. It will undoubtedly come to light that mega-tons of supplies and millions (or billions?) of dollars for relief, services and aid are needed. If I were able to take every dollar I've ever earned in my life and every one I ever hope to earn and direct them toward this one cause, I doubt it would make any appreciable difference or keep many people from perishing for lack of medical attention, housing and supplies.

This is the terrible inheritance of the modern Christian. We're equipped, as all people in first-world countries are, with the incredible advances of mass communication which enable us to hear global news instantly. Consequently, we are aware of a much greater number of disasters from around the world. We also have the tremendous advantage of huge charitable organizations like the Red Cross, United Way and a plethora of others which send us constant appeals for donations. But in spite of having grown much bigger antennae to detect problems and much longer arms to reach out, we still only have one person's ability to pay for things, one person's lifetime to do them in. We're not permitted the indulgence of thinking that we have fixed something completely or permanently, because in the second it would take us to pat ourselves on the back, fresh reports have come in and fresh appeals have arrived.

It reminds me of my experience of giving this year, which in turn reminded me of something in a book I read. This year, Greg and I were blessed with an unexpected largesse -- money that came in from a joint property my family owned and which my mother decided to sell. I determined early that I would split up the tithe on that money and see where it could do the most good. In the course of things, I arrived December 23rd with $2500 left to spend when I happened across a story in the St. Joseph paper telling me that there were 203 families on their Adopt-a-family Christmas program who hadn't been adopted. Two hundred and three! My amount to give, which had seemed so enormous a minute before, seemed like nothing ... because it was. It would give every family about $12. In the end, I had to settle for giving to fewer families and hoping that I wouldn't be the only person moved to action by the news story. I may find out that they were all helped in the end. But then again, I might not.

It made me remember something in Catch-22. The protagonist (if you can have such a thing is a book as iconoclastic as Catch-22) named Yossarian is flying a mission when his plane is struck by flak and a crew-member named Snowden is hit. Yossarian goes back and sees Snowden on the floor of the plane talking almost incoherently about the cold and showing a bad, but not terrible, wound. Yossarian immediately begins medical care -- which is described in careful detail -- and quickly has the wound cleaned, stitched and treated. At which point Snowden mentions the cold again and indicates his side. Yossarian opens his jacket and sees for the first time that Snowden is, in fact, spilling out from a wound much bigger and completely past hope of treatment. I think in the book it's one of the many times that Yossarian goes insane. I believe that when he lands, he takes off all his clothes and climbs a tree and won't come down (but I could be remembering that wrong. It's been years since I read the book, and it's confusing enough to remember a week later, let alone years.).

That's the crux of our problem these days, and I suppose I don't need to just include Christians when I postulate that it's enough to make us insane. Our pain might be the more acute for having been directed by the Author and Perfector of our faith to give to the poor, but then it might be mitigated as well -- as my husband just now dropped by and sensibly reminded me -- by knowing that He never promised us we could solve all their problems. In fact, Jesus told us specifically that we would always have the poor with us. So when we give, we really have to give as if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. If we insist on paying a lot of attention to our charitable giving, and being logical and sensible about it, we'll undoubtedly end up in the same place as many scientifically-minded people are -- not giving at all.

So maybe again, we do the right thing -- when we do the right thing -- not because we're made of better stuff than those around us who don't, or even because we love the Lord on Christmas Day enough to empty our wallet many times over for earthquake victims, but because we have been given the blessing (or curse) of sight in a blind world. And so we give, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

Baby, it's cold outside

2004-12-23T20:33:00.000-08:00

Well, if you live south of the Mason-Dixon line, your Gloat Meter should have gone off today. The daytime temperature here in the Kansas City area -- smack dab in the middle of the country if you're geographically-challenged -- was in the single digits. If you figure for wind chill and other variables, it's still in the single digits, but with that wicked minus sign in front of it.

I don't really want to know what the temperature is outside right now at 10:30 at night. Cold enough that when I take Clementine the hound out to take care of her business, she's downright brisk about it, not even caring to snuffle the ground to see if cats have been trespassing. And cold enough that cats don't trespass -- the most self-reliant cats-about-town haven't been abroad in weeks. Any of them lucky enough to possess a heater they can call their own doesn't budge from it.

If you're in one of those balmy southerly regions, I'll tell you that temperatures this low cut into you like a knife when you go out. When I was new enough to the Midwest not to understand the times that gloves aren't optional, I couldn't believe that by the time I had filled my tank at the gas station, the cold would've cut into my hands until they hurt as if I had punched through a window. You don't even realize as you walk that a lot of muscles are clenching in some primordial attempt to shield you from the elements, so that you become sore sometimes with the effort.

It all sounds very grim, and perhaps it is in a way. Ah, but what it means in such arctic conditions to be inside. What a blessed word that is -- inside. With the heater humming along and the Christmas tree lights making a cheerful reflection on the windows. With a dog in the next room warming the bed for me and a quiet, quiet street outside.

I just finished watching my favorite Christmas movie, the version of The Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. I'm not someone who gets tired of seeing movies that I really like over and over. I think I've liked something about every version I've seen -- including the Mr. Magoo one, which was the only one I knew about when I was a kid -- but for me all the elements come together the best in this one. They leave in most of the things I like and don't try to change the dialogue. Sorry, but there's no need to, not even after 140 (or whatever) years. I could certainly wish that Dickens hadn't started the tradition of venerating Christmas as a day and a state of mind without ever really mentioning why it's celebrated. But even that just seems like nit-picking right now. It's a fine thing to see it on Christmas Eve eve -- as fine as one of the cups of Christmas punch that they allude to and that I imagine must be spiced with oranges and cinnamon and served piping hot.

They make Scrooge's London look even more inhospitable outside than Kansas City, Missouri. But they make Christmas celebrating look every bit as warming to the soul as my toasty house and my blinking tree.

God bless us, every one.

The horrors of humanity

2004-12-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is the Sunday of the Ancestors in the Orthodox Church. This morning, we heard the geneology of Christ read from the book of Matthew. All those names -- Rahab, David, Zerubbabel, Zadok -- some of whose stories are known, some of whose names are at least mentioned elsewhere, some whom we know nothing about. And what about those we do know something about? It's not always a glowing picture: prostitutes, adulterers, murderers, liars, worshippers of Baal and other foreign gods. This is the lineage of Christ. When he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant, He became the descendant of sinners. It would be wonderful if every name read elicited only a glow of pride. There are certainly great heroes of the faith listed, but they all have their weaknesses as well. I heard a religious scholar recently remark that the Hebrew Bible is not the story of how people should be, but how they are. The divine condescension is our joy as we anticipate the Nativity, but the reality of what it means that the Son of God became one of us also has a sudden grittiness to me.

By now, I'm sure everyone has heard this absolutely horrible news. A woman is so desperate to have a child of her own after she miscarries that she comes into another woman's home on false pretences, murders her in cold blood and cuts the eight-month-old fetus (excuse me -- child) from her womb, which she then tries to pass off as her own. It's really too horrible to be believed. If I had read it in a book, I would've thought the author was going for a level of depravity that was more sensationalist that fact-based.

And it happened in Skidmore, a little town with a population of about 300 that's about two hours north of here. The town where the baby was taken was Malvern, KS -- another small town.

Human nature is such a funny thing. Why is it that when you read things like this, you almost immediately want to know where it happened, what kinds of people these were, did the victim act incautiously, as if any of these details can help you remove the circumstances from your world. What is it we want to hear? That it happened light years way away, in precisely the kind of environment and with the type of people that you have always wisely kept your distance from? That there is some snag in the system somewhere, and onces we address it with proper safeguards and new legislation, such things will never occur again? In spite of being jaded by hearing far too many graphic crime stories for our spiritual well-being, I suppose we can never help our automatic inclination to empathize and so, when that is too frightening, we have to immediately find the information that tells us that we have rendered ourselves inviolate and inaccessible to such evil.

The story in today's paper contained the kind of quote that you always hear from a neighbor or local resident in small town crimes. A woman in Malvern said, "you read about this kind of stuff, but it blows you away when it's here. This stuff is supposed to be in Los Angeles or New York." Perhaps in the light of such horror, these are the things that naturally occur to people to say, but I wince at them all the same. This is just the sort of attitude that country people are accused of -- bad things only happen in big cities, not out here where we're decent and upstanding. A Malvern man said, in answer to a question about the killer, "Do I hate her? If it happened anywhere else in the country, I'd hate her. But she's from here. I just feel nothing."

I haven't heard any quotes like that from the town of Skidmore, Missouri. But then, Skidmore may be something of a haunted town, if indeed the whole county isn't haunted. To a lot of residents, it may seem like the sudden media onslaught is deja vu.

In 1981, a reputed town bully named Ken Rex McElroy was shot to death in broad daylight on a main street in front of at least 40 people, all of whom professed complete ignorance as to the perpetrator of the crime. No one was ever charged. The incident became the subject of a best-selling book and a "60 Minutes" report.

And unfortunately, that isn't the only skeleton in the closet. The St. Joseph News-Press carried a short article of the bizarre crime history of Nodaway County. Here are a few examples:
* In 1972, a 15-year-old shot a family of four to death for no apparent reason.
* In 1994, a man was convicted of first-degree murder for running over his wife with a combine.
* In 2002, a 71-year-old man walked into an abbey and opened fire, killing two monks and wounding two before killing himself. No motive was ever discovered.
And I'm not including the rest, the organized crime hits and sex crimes and domestic abuse murders that have become all too common but still horrify us and make us wonder what demons enter into our fellow human beings.

These are terrible things to contemplate. And incomprehensible. And unanswerable. As such, perhaps I shouldn't be too harsh on the residents of these towns for not having more to say. I had been a little nonplussed with all the comments about how the baby needs to know she was loved, as if this in any way will be a comfort to this poor individual.

But what do I expect? We're only human, with a human capacity to process horror and grief and the realization of our fragile sense of our own safety and the rightness of things. Having a baby to focus on might take the sting out of it. Because such innocence and new life always symbolizes hope to us, Baby Victoria Jo Stinnen gives us a ray of light in the unbroken darkness of ruined and broken lives.

Out of the terror of our history, windows are broken when we least expect it. Sometimes without our ability to recognize them, they put the darkness to flight for a moment and enable us to see greater truths that we are too blind for most of the time.

Unto us, a Child is given ...

St. Gregory of Nazianzus "On the Incarnation"

2004-12-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

At a Serbian fest recently, I picked up a book of St. Gregory Nazianzus' poetry called On God and Man, and then, in the way we all have (I hope), congratulated myself on being the kind of person who picks up a book of the poetry of St. Gregory of Nazianzus and never got around to reading it. My guilt finally caught up with me today, and I opened it up at random to this poem called simply "On the Incarnation of Christ". I thought it was wonderful.

Foolish is he or she who does not worship the ever-existing Word of God, the Lord, as equally God with the supernal Father,
Foolish is he or she who does not worship the Word, the Lord, a human here appearing, as equally God with the heavenly Word.
The one divides the Word from the great Father, the other our human form and fleshiness from the Word.
Though being God, the Father's Word took on our human being,to mingle it with God, and be little amongst earthlings.
He is one God out of both, being so human as to make me God, instead of human.
Be merciful, O wounded one on high!
Let that much suffice you. What more have I to do with an ineffable mind and mixture?
Both are God, you mortals, be content with reason's limits.
If, then, I've won you over, much the better. But if you blacken the page
with many myriads of words,
come, and I'll inscribe these little verses upon tables with letters from my carving pen, which have no blackness in them.

$65,000 for a haunted cane?

2004-12-14T16:59:00.000-08:00

No wait, it's even better than that. $65,000 for a possibly-haunted-but-probably-not cane. Since we had a good laugh about the visionary cheese sandwich that sold on ebay for $28,000, we might as well do the follow-up. And the seller is from Hobart, Indiana where I used to live. That doesn't really have any bearing on the story, but Hobart's a pretty small town, so it's just one of those weird Small World things.

Fools and foolishness

2004-12-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

Touchstone mag features this excellent piece by the excellent Frederica Mathewes-Green entitled "Meet your Mocker" where she takes on the difficult subject about appropriate and inappropriate humor for a Christian. The whole article is a must-read, but the following graph ought to be printed out and made into a henna tattoo we can wear around:

When Jesus tells us not to even say "You fool!" to another, when he links malicious anger to the spirit of Murder, we glimpse the darker side of this pleasure. It is deliciously gratifying to see idiots roundly put down, but that sense of gratification is not really one of our better points. And maybe idiots deserve more mercy than that, since that company includes all of us sooner or later. I think of this whenever I hear a Christian smugly say that he or she does not "suffer fools gladly." Well, I think, Jesus suffers you.

Shakers and movers

2004-12-11T18:28:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching a Ken Burns documentary on the Shakers. I probably should be embarrassed about spending my Saturday night that way, but what the heck. Ken Burns -- who did the 11-episode about the Civil War in 1990 -- could make a good documentary about the history of Gruyere cheese, and all I knew about Shakers was (a) they're a religious movement, and (b) they're best known for their chairs. When you think about it, that's not much knowledge.

So now I know a little more. Here are the high points:
* As you probably could have guessed, "Shakers" is a nickname. The name of their religious movement is The United Church of Believers. They're a faction of Quakers and were called "Shaking Quakers" and then just "Shakers" because their worship included shaking dance moves.
* They were founded in the mid-18th century by Ann Lee (called Mother Ann Lee), a visionary. Their governing principles are of neatness, order, simplicity and industry. The reason that their chairs are so highly prized today -- as were, in their day, their seeds, architecture, home and farm innovations, and their woven cloth -- is because they held a belief that any single thing you did was to be done simply and without ornamentation but as close to perfection as possible, no matter how long it took.
* They also took a vow of celibacy, which left them more time and (according to the hypothesis of one commentator) more drive with which to build, farm and work.
* I don't know about that, but the celibacy is at least partly to blame for the fact that the Shakers are -- quite literally -- dying out. At its height in the 1800's there were 6,000 Shakers. Today there are 10.

So here was the part that made me want to blog about this. All the Shaker women they talked to looked to be in their 70s or 80s. When they were talking about the future of the movement, one of them said something like, "I am certain that the Shaker movement will come back again. This is God's work. How could anything that's God's work go away? Nothing any human being could ever do would make it go away."

This had a familiar ring to it. These are just the sorts of things that people at my old parish used to say, and they made me nuts then. I think it's part of the reason I decided to do a blog in the first place, because I wanted other Orthodox to know yes, sometimes churches die. (In the case of my old church, for those just tuning in, the priest left -- both the church and the priesthood -- and on any given Sunday, there are only 3-7 people to attend reader's services, if they are held. All feast days are neglected, the choir is non-existent, and there hasn't been a divine liturgy done there since July.) Yes, there is no certain contract with God that the church you grew up in will be there until you die, just because you want it to be.

The Orthodox Church universal has survived for roughly two millennia. If it can survive the fall of the Byzantine Empire and oppression by Romans, heretics, Turks, Mongols, Crusaders, Communists and anyone else with a sharp stick, it can survive just about anything.

But individual parish churches are not always so endowed with long-sightedness. I won't go again into the problems that sunk mine, but I will say that the attitude of a central group that this particular church was a birthright, an entitlement, is one of the things that ruined its ability to be the active, living organism that churches must be. It doesn't have to do with God not being good or provident or merciful. But when He can no longer be what we know Him to be -- vital, alive, creative, ever-changing and ever the same -- what is there left for Him to be?

I think the problem for the Shakers is that the vessel that they gave Him to inhabit was too small. God forbid that the same should turn out to be true about us.

Stupid Christmas presents

2004-12-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not keeping up with my blogging more these days. I have been doing a lot of my gift-buying online, and having the time of my life.

Last Christmas, money was (in the words of the old 80's song) too tight to mention, so we tried to be brave little soldiers with bright, shiny eyes and say "God bless us, every one," around our tiny Christmas turkey. And while I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, there's nothing like following it up with a Christmas where we've got money (in the words of the Confucius) out the wazzoo to make a person giddy with the incredible happiness of giving. You get Scrooge-the-morning-after happy. I've gotten things for everyone. I bought money-holder cards for the trashmen. I'm contemplating a combination-species gift basket for my pet sitter and her dogs and cats. I've been going nuts.

But not so nuts that I haven't noticed that some of the offerings in the 584 catalogs that I have left in my house are really just utter crap. And I'd love to say that it's the chintzier catalogs that are the culprits here. But it's not even a close contest. Apparently, we are a country that is so rich that we're going to buy things that are just stupid.

Consider this item, for example: The Bow-Lingual Dog Translator. Now, for a measly $93 YOU can have the oratorio of your spaniel not only communicated to you no matter where you are, but interpreted for you. For example, as the helpful picture shows, your idle golden retriever looking off into the distance might have the words "Woof!" leap out of his head in a comical typeface. And where would YOU be? Would you be one of those hopeless dunces that wouldn't know what that meant in people-speak? Would you be one of those reprobates that missed the whole event because you were "away" at "work"? But this is the 21st century! We need no longer be missing critical information from our pets. Japanese technology has come to the rescue. I just want to know who did the translating, because anyone who thinks a dog means more than about four things when it barks has problems that will cost a lot more than $93 to fix.

Or, if you're going to be flying long distances, you'll want to get a couple of these Knee Defenders. If you've flown, you know exactly what they're talking about. You're already stuck in a tiny coccoon-like space where there isn't room to exhale -- and then the selfish pleasure-seeking lout in the seat in front of you reclines their @%#!!! seat. Since the seats only recline by about two inches, probably the only thing stupider than him doing it is you going quietly insane about it. But there you are. Such is the lot of an air-traveler. But no! If you only had your Knee Defenders with you, you could brace the suckers in at the tray table and grin like a troll when that crum tried to recline. Of course, you'd have to go through the flight with the tray table open, but really, is that such a price to pay for pure spite? Think of the look on their mawkish, bovine face when the damn seat won't go down. Omigosh! That'd be rich. (The instructions in the catalog say, "As a courtesy, let the person in that seat know they can ask you to remove or adjust Knee Defender when they're ready to recline." Um, yeah ... right.)

And really, there are too many things in the Sharper Image catalog to even know where to begin. Sharper Image has defined the goody bag for the well-heeled hypochondriac. More and more of the space that used to go to exercise machines for your car and other necessary items has had to go to magnetic healing devices, massagers for every possible place (including some I don't want to know about) and things to control negative ions. (And in case you're new to all this High Science, the negatively-charged ions are the ones you want. So negative, good. Postive, bad. ) Sharper Image has those bad old ions on the run, by golly. I typed "ion" into the search window, and it gave me five pages to choose from. Praise be! What a merry Yuletide I'll have if I can just cancel the effects of that nasty old fireplace with an ion-spewing fan with a thermostat, timer and remote control. (Page one -- $89.)

So my advice -- skip them all. Go to ebay. Type in any combination of words you want. You'll get 300 screens-full of possibilities, most at bargain prices, all with amusing typos and bad pictures. But cruise the catalogs anyway, just for the fun of it.

Merry, merry Christmas.

You think we have partisan politics?

2004-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

My friends, we do not have partisan politics.

Pacify Muslims by dropping paper cranes on them

2004-12-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

We could certainly learn a thing or two about keeping the peace from the honorable Buddhist kingdom of Thailand. When they start to have the kind of trouble with the Muslim population that has led to horrors worldwide, the premier Thaksin Shinawatra (you'll want to memorize that name -- it'll be on Jeopardy someday) wastes no time with acts of complicated diplomacy or messy police actions -- nope, he gets people folding origami cranes.

This is a front-page story in today's Wall St. Journal (again, a subscription-only thing so I can't link), but it should have come from a Dave Barry column. Apparently, Shinawatra has been sensing unrest in the Muslim-dominated southern provinces, where hundreds have died in violence that escalated after a brutal police crackdown on Muslim protesters resulted in 85 deaths, mostly through ill-treatment.

So, what to do? Wellllll, through the kind of enlightenment that would only come to most of us after a Nyquil enema, Shinawatra arrived at the absolutely wonderful idea of having the entire population fold paper cranes (which bring peace and hope to their beholders, according to Japanese tradition) for every man, woman and child in Thailand. That's 63,000,000 paper cranes.

And how to bestow these favorable tidings? Why, you take them up in planes and drop them out of bomb-bay doors on the unsuspecting heads of the southern Muslims, of course. After all, what could possibly soothe those jihad-invoking hotheads more than being pelted with 63 million pellets of carefully folded -- and altogether meaningless -- good will?

Well, not altogether meaningless. Actually, some Muslims are already offended by the gesture, since their religion considers representation of any created thing as idolotry.

As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

Two bantengs are better than one

2004-12-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

I saw a clone today. I don't know how old it was -- the sign didn't say. But it was a healthy adult male and seemed to be enjoying his lot in life. I can't be sure about that last part, but he was chewing his cud as contentedly as all the bantengs.

This was at the San Diego zoo. I came up to an enclosure with a dozen or so bantengs -- wild cattle from Java -- and happened to read that one of the males was cloned from frozen cells they had of one born in the zoo in 1974.

Are you kidding me? I read it again. Yep, it's an experiment and he's the first successful clone at the San Diego Zoo, and, I think, the first banteng.

Am I the only one who thinks that's kind of amazing? Dolly the sheep -- the first cloned mammal -- was born in July of 1996. Now clones are commonplace enough that it's not a big deal.

I left the enclosure shaking my head. There seems like no chance that people in the current culture can possibly say that there are some lines we just shouldn't cross. Cloning proponents only see a bright shiny future ahead where everyone has a spare version of themselves chilling in the back like a pick-your-part auto/body shop. At least that's the way this article from Instapundit sees it. In it, the Speculist happily imagines the day "a few years from now" when he'll have a clone of himself developing:

It would be an amazing little bud of life, similar to (genetically identical to) the amazing little bud of life that eventually grew into me. But we have a different developmental path for this bud.

Chilling, no?

We aren't going to kill it; the whole idea is to produce a viable collection of ongoing cells. We will remove that part of it that makes it want to grow into a different person ... and otherwise, we will allow it to go on living indefinitely. If I am injured or get sick, part of this collection of cells will be reintroduced into the organism from which it came — that would be me — to help it recover. As I age, more of the cells might be introduced to help counteract the effects; still others might be put on a new developmental path towards being a finished "part": a heart or a set of lungs or a new pair of eyes.

I was sort of hoping he was kidding, but I don't think he was.

Each time one of these procedures was done, this living human tissue would grow into a human being. Why would anyone insist that it has to grow into a different human being? Says who? My twin brother can't demand that he has a right to exist. I never have to create a clone in the first place. And if I do create one, I assert that I have the right (before it grows into a separate and distinct human being) to decide that it will be me, rather than him, when it grows up.

Yep, no problem with playing God here.

California vakay blogomatic

2004-11-30T11:28:00.000-08:00

After doing due diligence with both sets of folks for Thanksgiving, Greg and I are winding up with a little business and pleasure combination in San Diego and flying back Thursday. All of this gives me the occasion to get in a little time in one of my favorite cities and do blogging from another locale while on vacation, which I always think should count in double-coolness blogosphere redemption stamps.

So after depositing Greg at his workplace du jour, I left the car and hoofed it to my nearest Kinko's. This enabled me to get in a little walking time in downtown San Diego. It's a lovely area -- full of enough coffee houses and little ethnic restaurants to fulfill the needs of the perpetually sunglass-wearing crowd but masking its density and high-rise profile behind historic charm. You encounter a lot of the beautiful older stone and brick facades that are in such short supply in southern California, which gives the little blocks enough personality that you don't mind the inevitable bother of one-way streets and endless construction. And there's life on the streets, unlike the wide and unpopulated sidewalks in my old home base of Orange and LA counties. (Though the life manifests itself in interesting ways, as I remembered on the way here when a fairly normal-looking fifty-something woman in a Santa hat straightened up as we walked past each other and said to me with great sincerity, "How do you know I'm not married?" I shrugged with feeling. You got me there.)

So here's a few odds and ends before the new keyboard and the silly Kinko's chair that wants me to be fully reclining while I type annoy me too much and I have to find a Starbucks to rejuvenate myself.

***

On blogosphere numbers:
Greg the Husband sent me this article about the expanding world of Blog. There's nothing new in saying that new blogs are being added on at an astronomical pace, but I appreciate a little perspective on that, like this bit of context by Weblogs Inc. founder Jason McCabe Calacanis:

There are millions of blogs, but I would say less than 1 million are updated
regularly. So less than 1 percent of the country is blogging, but that figure is going to grow over the next five years to some percentage of the folks who e-mail today.

***

Democrat crisis control:
Interesting editorial in today's Wall St. Journal from Joe Trippi who managed Howard Dean's campaign entitled "Only the Grassroots Can Save the Democrat Party" (subscription only, so I can't link to it). Leaving aside for a minute why the Democrats should pay a lot of attention to the manager of a presidential candidate who, y'know, failed, it's still worth considering his bullet-pointed list of how to save the day. It's probably worth even less for The Most Republican Woman in Ortho-blogosphere to add my thumbs up or thumbs down, but keeping my opinions to myself isn't a strong-point:

* Don't ignore the base. The heck with centrists and swing-voters. -- Thumbs up. I would say the same to the right. Be what you are -- stop pretending to be everything else in between. You don't fool anyone and you look like you don't like being what you are.

* "Democrats must reconnect with the energy of our grass roots." -- One thumb up while the other one scratches my head. What does that mean exactly? All through the article Trippi invokes "grass roots" and the benefits to be derived therefrom without ever quite saying what he means by that. I suppose it might be best defined by what it's not. Grass roots aren't Hollywood left, academician left, pundit left or any of the other high-profile movers and shakers that shape the party. Grass roots are those who don't feel addressed by any of the bombast of the elite wing and those who don't have much money to give. It probably is a good idea to involve those people, but it seems to conflict with his first point. Many of these are not the types that are willing to say "I am a Democrat" (or Republican for that matter), and view themselves as centrist.

* Host and moderate Grassroots Councils in every county. Take politics out of Washington D.C., and into Bat's Grommet, N.M. etc. -- Thumbs stuck up my nose. Grassroots Councils? Sounds like an Amway party without the personal warmth. Goodness knows stuff like this sometimes works, but I don't know how.

* Don't ignore state and local DNC. -- Thumbs twiddling. Don't know enough to comment, though it sounds like a good, if obvious, idea.

* Find innovative ways to support organized labor's growth -- One thumb up, one down. I feel conflicted. The part of me that thinks that the conservative agenda works better for the country than liberal agenda hopes that they waste a lot of time on this hopeless goal. But if I was trying at all to be objective, I'd tell them that trying to engineer the entire economy and workforce to the days when labor unions were necessary and effective -- let alone hold back the forces of global communication and commerce that have resulted in massive outsourcing of non-professional jobs -- is like trying to hold back a tidal wave by hitting it with a stick.

* Be the vehicle for changing our failed political system by placing stricter money restrictions on candidates -- one thumb up. Likelihood that the DNC will actually do this: virtually nil. Turn down all that shiny money from George Soros? Yeah, right.

* Develop bold ideas and challenge people to sacrifice for the public good -- two thumbs totally up. Going back to the first point -- be liberal. Go ahead. My thought is that once the experiment is tried it will be clear to everyone what works and what doesn't about a pure liberal agenda, but if we never try, we'll never know.

***

Lunch critique:
Lunched with Greg at one of the small taco places that he loves. Two words of advice for the owners:
* a fish taco is a lightly battered, herb-seasoned ounce or two of fish in a taco filled with cabbage. It isn't a plank of Long John Silver's cod with lettuce all over it on a tortilla. Let's get right.
* if you have a cousin who paints badly, you don't owe it to them to hang their stuff on the wall. If you paid anything for the paintings of deformed people in serapes, you were robbed.

***

Summing up Orthodoxy for non-Orthodox:
Karl's anniversary list of favorite posts continues to provide fascinating observations, particularly as every post has links to other posts. In this post about the cult of the nice, there was this thought from SockMonk:

Orthodox Christians have no grounds to be proud of their own accomplishments or lofty spirituality. But please forgive us if we insist on pointing to the most competent and effective hospital we have been able to find for our own diseases and hurts.

***

A Very Un-PC Christmas to you:
This reprint from Huw brings up a good point for those people, myself included, who are still trying to arrive at the best answer of what to say (if anything) along the lines of 'Merry Christmas'.

A Christian wishing the "greetings of the season" wishes to say, "Your religion maybe good enough for you so, enjoy it". It is not what is heard by the other party, however. What the Christian should say is "The Incarnation is not just for me, but also for you if you will accept it..." and so "Merry Christmas" or "Christ is Born!" is the right thing to say -- that or nothing. The Non-Christian will hear such a sentiment even if all we say is "Happy Holidays".

I'm inclined to agree. People will hear "Christmas" in whatever you say -- why not actually say it? What's the worst that could happen? I think we "sensible" Orthodox are afraid of looking like we're coming on too strong (like those frightful Protestants) but somewhere along the way, I often feel guilty of being ashamed of Christ, let alone being a man-pleaser.

Something to work on, and only 26 Repenting Days till Nativity!

When cubicle-dwellers have issues

2004-11-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

April Fool's Day pranks amongst the paper-clip patrons.

Orthodox salmagundi (Advent fast-friendly, of course)

2004-11-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

Some odds and ends from here and there.

***

This, from the Orthodox convert list-serv, which was asked the Orthodox view on the anti-Christ:

From Fr. David Moser:

It is certainly an Orthodox belief that just before the second coming of Christ, the end of all things and the great judgement there will be a man who is "the antichrist" who will deceive many (in fact most) and claim the "place" of Christ. But there is nothing that "identifies" who this is to be ahead of time, nor is there any reason or encouragement to "indentify" him. The way that law enforcement agents are taught to identify counterfeit money is not by studying counterfeits, but by learning to know the "real thing" -- the counterfeit is then exposed by what it is not. Our task is to learn to know "the real thing" that is Christ and then the antichrist will be obvious by what he is not.

From Silouan

I kinda like to stick to the stuff I DO understand but can't do. GK Chesterton said "St. John saw many strange things in his revelation, but nothing as strange as his interpreters."

***

The biggest story you'll never read: It may already be old news on the Ortho-blogosphere that the Pope is returning these stolen relics, but it amazed me to think that the Western Church is making a gesture to make amends for the injustice done during the Crusades.

***

Angry Catholics have apparently vandalized their own cathedral trying to purify the church against the incursion of gay Catholics.

There's a right way to do things and a wrong way. This is the wrong way.

****

There's a fine post from the Magazine That Shall Not Be Mentioned concerning a proper perspective for Thanksgiving. (If you're a born skimmer, like I am, you can skip to the last graph.)

And so the virtues of patriotism are secondary but real---as real as any of our loyalties, short of those to God Himself. We should be thankful for the peerless gift of this rich and abundant land. With all its faults, it has been a refuge for all of humanity—an island of prosperity and order and democracy in a cruel and violent world, and a place where the most vital of all liberties, the freedom to worship God in spirit and truth, has been cherished and enshrined in our fundamental institutions.
We constantly fail to appreciate the magnitude of this legacy---and the responsibilities entailed in it. We should live in gratitude and faithfulness to it, even as we built upon it in our own ways. We should strive to be worthy of our forebears’ hopes, their dreams, their sacrifices, and their love. We should pray for the strength and wisdom and discipline to be good stewards of this gift. And yes, we are obliged to improve and purify and preserve it, so that the generations to come will also have reason to be thankful that we were here.
Yet even as we give thanks for our nation, the example of the Pilgrims reminds us that this beautiful place is not our home. That we were made not for it, or for any other earthly nation, but for God alone. That even this great nation, like all things here below, is imperfect, and will perish someday. That even as we make our homes, plant our gardens, and raise our families here, there will come a time when those families are no more, when our yet-unborn grandchildren will be vanished, our houses torn down, every earthly grace and beauty decayed into dust and scattered in the air. That this city on a hill is, like every earthly city, not a city for us to abide in.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Adventures with dog -- first snow

2004-11-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

WHOMP!

It must have made that noise, though I slept through it. But we got so much snow in such a short time, it had to have sounded something like that. I took the dog out at nine-ish last night and there was no snow. We'd been hearing that we would get snow, and so I bothered to remark out loud to the dog, "We're not going to get any snow tonight." She looked unimpressed with my prognosticating abilities, but then she had found some new junk to smell, so I didn't think anything of it.

I took her out at ten-ish, and there was some sleety rain falling. She must've been sleepy when I took her out, because she's religiously opposed to being out in any watery precipitation. But she didn't notice until it was too late, and I was too grateful for that to think any more about the weather.

And the next thing I knew, I looked out the window and there was six inches of snow on the ground. Clementine was still sleepy this morning when I took her out, and so she missed her usual response to snow and just did what she had to do and returned to the warmth of the house. It was only on her second morning trip that she did the Hound-dog Happy Dance of Snow.

Since I haven't had a dog since I was a kid, I don't know whether all dogs love this time of winter or whether it's only the hunting dogs. (Clementine is half coonhound and half Brittany Spaniel, which is like having a dad named Bubba and a mom named Tiffany.) I keep thinking that she'll be thinking den animal coccooning thoughts in these cold, gray November days. Shows what I know. She doesn't want to hibernate -- she wants to chase after ALL the smells. If she ever does track one down -- some trespassing cat or slow-moving squirrel -- it is very, VERY exciting and we have to bark a LOT. But she doesn't really have any ideas other than that, which is what happens I suppose when a dog hasn't been trained to hunt and isn't stimulated by hunger.

I don't know why she goes a little nuts in the snow. She's so short on brains sometimes, I could almost imagine that she starts running because it's cold, without realizing that if she'd run back in the house, she wouldn't be cold anymore. But I think that's just me assuming she's being dense. To judge by appearances, there's just something about the snow everywhere that overawes her senses, or maybe it's just that running in the snow is the greatest of joys. But anyway, this morning she bolted around and around while I laughed. If snow had still been falling, she'd probably still be running, but as it was, I was able to get her back into the house after only five or six laps.

That extra exercise came in handy, I think, because when I took her to the kennel for boarding, she was actually somewhat calm in the car. Hopefully, the run in the snow will continue to warm her heart and calm her spirits while she's boarded for a couple days. Then her pet-sitter comes to take her to her home away from home (two other dogs and two ***cats*** that she gets to play with) and after that life is once again as good as it can be.

How good it would be to be a dog.

A reason to live

2004-11-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

Redford has decided not to move to France.

(Best quote in the story comes from the Calgary columnist who said, "Stay home, you pathetic, whining maggots!" Sorry, Huw, I know you don't like the snarky stuff, but this one was too good to pass up.)

Cue the Apocalypse

2004-11-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

Uh-oh. Locusts in the Holy Land. Abandon ship.

Flying Dutchmen

2004-11-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

Does anybody else think the developing situation in the Netherlands is one of the most interesting things going on right now?

If so, here's another tidbit.

***
And besides all that, does somebody want to explain to me why Holland is also The Netherlands but the people and language are Dutch? Those aren't even close! By golly, you don't get cheek like that from the other Northern Europeans -- Finland, Finnish; Sweden, Swedish; Norway, Norwegian. I'm a C student -- consistency, please.

Prayer request

2004-11-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

I'm asking for prayers for the priest of my new church, Fr. John from Holy Trinity OC in Kansas. He had been having stomach pains, and now they've determined that he has a tumor in his pancreas. It isn't the extremely fast-spreading and indestructible kind of cancer (thank God!), but a very rare type that isn't quite as dangerous but unfortunately isn't quite as well-known and understood. So tests proceed to determine the best course of action, but in the meantime, he's in substantial pain since the tumor is pressing on some nerves. Please pray for him and his wife, and also for our church.

Thank you, brothers and sisters.

Londonderry Air

2004-11-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

I keep meaning to mention, I'm going off on a trip to London from Dec 27-Jan 9, and I wondered if anyone's got suggestions of places to go and things to see that might not have made it into my "London for Dummies" book. (Yes, they have a "London for Dummies" book. Is there any limit to the things that are for dummies these days? "Channel Flipping for Dummies" "Staring into Space for Dummies" "Trying to Think of the Name of That Guy in That Movie for Dummies" Of course, I bought the silly thing. So "Book Publishing for Dummies")

And to the Ortho-blog crowd, any Orthodox churches to look up? I don't know if I'll be able to attend a service (my mother would explode), but I'd love to poke my head in.

Thinking it through with Bill

2004-11-19T10:02:00.000-08:00

America has two great dominant strands of political thought ... conservatism, which at its very best draws lines that should not be crossed, and progressivism, which at is very best breaks down barriers that are no longer needed or should never have been erected in the first place.

Bill Clinton said that at the opening of his library yesterday.

I'm so weirded out. What -- I'm agreeing with Bill Clinton now?

But this is exactly the way my thoughts have been inclining since the election. I've been sort of flailing at the point, and I hate to say it but Bill Clinton put it simpler and more elegantly that I've been able to. And of course, he might actually know what he's talking about, whereas I can never be sure.

The point is: what if there is a need in our society for both liberals and conservatives? We've gotten so used to going at each other with picks and shovels that we never stopped to wonder what's at risk if either side succeeds in eliminating the other. Suppose that the questions of our communal life together ("How do we govern ourselves?", "How do we care for those in need?", "How can we protect ourselves without impinging on our freedoms?", "How can we promote commerce and trade?", "How do we ensure the best quality of life for ourselves and others?" and the big one: "What is our plan for the future?") aren't best answered by strict conservatism or liberalism, but by a combination of both? Suppose we should be interacting as St. Paul exhorts in I Corinthians 12 , and not each seeking total control?

But the important part of the picture is implicit in the phrase "at its best". Is the Democratic Party at its best right now? Is the Republican?

The conservative side has overstepped its original bounds. Conservatives never used to worry about telling our side of the story or getting our slice of the pie; it wasn't worth making a stink about to us. But I think that we started doing it because of the rank unfairness of being so underrepresented and misrepresented in our own culture by people who couldn't see any way but their own. However it came about, it may be now that we whose job it is to "draw the lines that shouldn't be crossed" are over-reacting, and drawing too many lines. Maybe we need to pick our battles better. Maybe we need to consider places where we can compromise territory without compromising our principles.

And the progressive side is broken. I don't know why it happened, and I don't know how. But if we're positing for the moment that the country does best with a balance of conservative and progressive, it can't be right that the self-restraining and humanity-edifying qualities of Christianity have mostly gravitated to one side of the equation. (And apparently the trend has been increasing in recent years.) And leaving religion aside for a minute, the liberals are lacking grown-ups these days. They're even lacking idealists.

At one time, liberals were the bleeding hearts; they were the people that wanted to save the world. Now their favorite pasttime seems to be arguing for the sake of argument. What happened? They seemed a tender-hearted lot, inclined to want to read poetry and find daisies to lie down in.

Or dandelions. Maybe that's it. You've got the Berke Breathed "Bloom County" branch and the Garry Trudeau "Doonesbury" branch. You've got one that can actually still laugh at themselves and who fall down in the dandelion patch for spiritual rejuvenation, and then you've got the ones who haven't had an original thought since Watergate and whose entire message has come down to pontifications against conservatives.

Well, I'm in no position to counsel them, but I'm sure rooting for the Berke Breathed guys. I'd even lie down in the dandelion patch with them -- what the heck.

The testimony of numbers

2004-11-19T09:07:00.000-08:00

This fine entry on OthodoxyToday.com called "Tripartite Formulations: The strengths of threes" says something that doesn't get said enough: that the evidence of God and the beauty of His craftsmanship exist in math and geometry.

The ancients understood the strength of things arranged in threes, and the thesis that “a threefold cord is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12) expressed a truth that no one in olden times was prone to doubt.

A simple deference to geometry sufficed to settle the question. The triangle, after all, is plain geometry’s only stable figure with straight lines. Geometry–literally, the measuring of the earth–is solidly founded on trigonometric functions, and the surest way to calculate the earth (or the heavens!) is by trigonometrical survey.

I wish I were good at math and science. It is not my strong point. (I'm not sure what my strong point is yet, but I think it's going to turn out to be something silly like blowing bubbles.) I would think that for those Christians who had the aptitude, the study of physics and biology would offer jewel-like proofs of God's omnipresence. I would think that you would constantly have the delight of seeing His fingerprints in the laws of nature by which we're all bound and by which we could all learn.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)

Out of the mouths of babes

2004-11-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

Orthodixie has a good list of short letters that children wrote to God. They'll all make you smile, but this one also sounded seemed to carry a little bit of bigger truth:

Dear God, I bet it's very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family and I can never do it. Nancy

Watch what you ask for

2004-11-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

Haven't I been saying that the Democrats need to find those poor little Christian Democrats they've had hog-tied in Terry McAuliffe's garage and let them out? But this from the New York Times isn't quite what I had in mind:

Bested by a Republican campaign emphasizing Christian faith, some Democrats are scrambling to shake off their secular image, stepping up efforts to organize the "religious left" and debating changes to how they approach the cultural flashpoints of same-sex marriage and abortion.

Well, ... no. It's not about bringing in the Christian Eye for the Secular Guy group to re-do the kitchen with fish symbols. It's about liberating the souls that you've kept bound and gagged for ... well, for how long?

No prominent opponent of abortion has come anywhere near the podium of a Democratic convention since 1992.

Thank you. Since 1992. But in any case, it doesn't look like it's ever going to happen. Those that want the party to stay monotheist-free are vehement:

"Our platform and the grass-roots strength of the party is pro-choice," said Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of Naral Pro-Choice America. The party needs more religious language, Ms. Cavendish said, but not new positions.

Many Democrats agree. ... they argue that the party can reach religious voters without flinching from its current stance on abortion rights ..

Why is it that Kerry could change his stand on any issue four times in the same debate, and these guys can't possibly take in a new thought for 12 years in a row?

And this ...

2004-11-16T22:00:00.000-08:00

... just makes me sad. Garrison Keillor, who I remember seeing when he brought Prairie Home Companion to a California theater -- and who got the audience to sing an old hymn called "Tell Me Why" that was simple and uplifting and sweet -- apparently has decided on a scapegoat:

Not one to shy away from speaking his mind, Keillor proposed a solution to what he deemed a fundamental problem with U.S. elections. “I’m trying to organize support for a constitutional amendment to deny voting rights to born-again Christians,” Keillor smirked. “I feel if your citizenship is in Heaven—like a born again Christian’s is—you should give up your citizenship. Sorry, but this is my new cause. If born again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?”

(sigh)

It hasn't been a good day.

Monstrous

2004-11-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

The events in Iraq are hideous. I think that those that killed Margaret Hassan may have overstepped the bounds even of what the other insurgents will tolerate (this article mentions that al-Zarqawi actually told these kidnappers not to execute her), and so I hold out some small and probably over-optimistic hope that this slaughter of hostages will lose momentum.

And of course, the unfolding story concerning the soldier who shot the wounded terrorist is terrible to contemplate. But I have my reasons for not commenting on it here, and if there's anyone who is violently opposed to the war and the spreading violence, I hope that I can make an appeal that reaches beyond politics.

The pursuit of justice that we Americans are used to seeing on every screen and hearing on every airwave -- let alone weighing in on through the blogosphere -- is not as important right now as the lives of the troops, their allies and the civilians at risk if we insist in replaying the footage and reacting violently and publicly. Remember that Nick Berg was beheaded in response to Abu Gharib. That our enemies would take this merciless action is something we can't control. But we can control at least one of the catalysts that lead to those actions.

All terrorists feed on extremism and covet publicity. Don't provide it. Those with strong opinions can say them, they can phone friends, they can e-mail and say what they need to say privately. But I really believe that this is not the time when honorable people either create or participate in a media firestorm. The effects of that storm won't be felt here where we're safe, but overseas where men, women and children are at risk. The armed forces are investigating this -- the soldier is innocent until proven guilty. Please don't compound this tragedy with others.

Quick blogger apology

2004-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

Since this post got so much attention (Thank you kindly, Mr. Reynolds. The check is in the mail), I really feel like I need to apologize for the fact that I don't have a list of links on my page. That's not because I don't want to be a Good Blogger; it's due to my pitiful grasp of all things on a computer that don't involve the touch of one button. My tech guy -- who I cleverly married -- is on the job readying the bigger, better version on MovableType, and when I get that up, I'll have a list. So in the meantime, many, many thanks to those who decided to link to the page. I'm trying to keep track so I can link.

Adventures with dog

2004-11-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

With the days getting shorter and Clementine the Dumb but Pretty Hound-dog unable to grasp the concept of Daylight Savings Time, she's been bugging me for the end-of-day walk earlier and earlier. Today it happened to fit in with some afternoon apathy about work, so we did the rare 4:00 walk. It was a good afternoon for it. We've had a wonderful Indian summer -- without which it seems nearly impossible to say goodbye to autumn. But now the sky is getting more overcast. Birds aren't singing anymore, and the crickets don't chirp at night (although by Paul Harvey's folklore, that should mean it's 40 degrees out, right?). I felt like altering the scenery from our usual walk, so I took Clem up a different street. And then the Afternoon Barkfest Lollapolooza started. Our first contestant was a terrier who was on lookout, as terriers always are. He turned out only to be the Early Warning Device for a large brownish-mass of dog and several auxillary dogs. As Clementine passed by, they set up a barbershop quartet, with the terrier getting in four clarion notes for every one cannon blast of the mass.

This alerted a matching pair of light and dark labradors, side-by-side in chain link enclosures, and they immediately weighed in with an almost identical baritone bark only slightly off tempo from each other, like an irregular heart beat. For some reason, the light lab decided that the dark lab was really the bigger threat and turned to direct all future exclamations to him, with him returning the favor. They looked like a pair of bookends turned toward each other.

We rounded the corner of the short street and entered the homestretch only to encounter the Mutt and Jeff team -- big black mutt and lhaso apso. Both had ample warning of our approach from the 21-gun salute around the corner, and they lost no time in setting up their own protective barrier of sound, managing between the two of them to make a nearly continuous noise that hiccuped high and low. In this part of the pageant, the visual is more impressive, I think, because the lhasa apso gets so incensed that the force of the bark seems to lift it off the ground. The mutt-basso carries further, but it's not half as interested, and its tail is usually wagging, spoiling the effect.

And then -- yes, it's the crowning achievement. A Brittany spaniel across the street whose bark has such a high and cutting edge to it that it actually makes Clementine whip around as if it's the first one she's heard all day. I don't know what it is that's so particularly piercing about that one, but it has the effect of setting all the contenders -- terrier, mass, others, yin/yang labs, Mutt and Jeff -- back into full cry. It's like the last incredible fusillade of fireworks before it's time to go home.

Eventually though, they fade. The Brittany with the descant lasts the longest, but finally when it has neither sight nor smell of Clementine -- that impertinent strumpet! -- it wuffs a last time and trots away.

That was fun, guys. We'll do it again tomorrow.

Red state, blue state, me state, you state

2004-11-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

Since there is obviously a great amount of pain and suffering over the whole redstate-bluestate thing (or, more exactly, redcounty-bluecounty), and since the Blues are grumbling about packing their bags and leaving, or staying where they are and seceding (with bright political lights like Geraldine Ferraro reminding them that they have all the talent and creativity in their blue boundaries), I think they really ought to consider making us sign a contract so there won't be any more misunderstanding about what's expected of everyone. Consider this modest example:

***
We, the bold, free-spirited peoples of the Diverse Lands of Blue America, hereby contract with you, the safe, ordinary drabs of the Nearly-contiguous Lands of Red America to exist peaceably and amicably in the manner to which we've become accustomed.

We will continue to exist in heavily-impacted urban centers in areas where our explosive growth and profligate lifestyle are completely unsustainable -- deserts, swamps, mountains, frozen wastelands, coasts and islands -- and so we will be needing to pull heavily from your water and other natural resources. We will need you to have power plants, waste recycling plants and refineries in your areas, since we can't stand to look at the ugly things.

We will need to convert some of the more inhabitable areas you have into parks and bedroom communities for us, since our cities are too disgusting for any of us to consider living in them. We will come out in droves, build densely and go elsewhere to work. We won't care about these communities or put any work into their governance. You are welcome to stay if you'd like -- and if you can afford the housing costs once we're there -- but please don't alter the opinion landscape that we'd like to exist in. In other words, please either be like us or aspire to be like us ... or shut up.

We need a tremendous amount of ever-changing, ever-improving goods and services. We will need you to provide manpower for industries and meet these needs. As such, we will need you to raise respectful, honest, hard-working children. We don't care how you do it, but please don't tell us how. If it has anything to do the preservation of the "traditional family unit" or instilling "moral values" we really, REALLY don't want to know.

We will raise our children to be untethered, free spirits with no boundaries like ourselves. In other words, spoiled, bored, self-centered, angry, dispirited, whiny and uncontrollable thugs, sociopaths and cowards. We will want to shape their beautiful little minds into carbon copies of our own, in order to ensure future creativity (and socio-political continuity), but you can help us raise them if you want, as long as you don't impose any limitations on them. Heck, you can even have them in daycare and private schools. Goodness knows we can't stand the little monsters. Ha ha. We're kidding. Okay, we're not.

We love our pets. We own our children (and invoke their name to our own political ends). Don't ask why.

Because of our precious children, and because it is unconscionable to us to ever frown upon any activity of our populace -- criminal or otherwise -- we will need you to have prisons and drug rehab centers to house our miscreants. Also, it pleases us to maintain a constant supply of non-incentivizing social programs, so remember to pay your taxes promptly and vote in every new bond.

Though we hold the brave and unique opinion that wars are a bad idea, we will occasionally sanction aggressive action. We will need you and your children to defend us, since we're not very good at the whole macho thing. Be assured that we support the troops, though we're not really sure what that means. We think that it means that we will denigrate their efforts constantly by putting on chic protest events with cutting jibes and clever costumery and a LOT of drugs and alcohol. If so, we support the troops. If it has anything to do with not encouraging the enemy with treasonous talk and the leaking of sensitive information, we don't support the troops. (Sorry. That would just be asking too much.)

We must be clear: you are racist, sexist, xenophobic and narrow-minded. We know there have been attempts on your side to dialogue about our stereotypes of you that haven't changed since the 50's, but remember -- we are the definers; you are the defined. We will let you know if things ever change, but there are some sizable voting blocs at risk here, so don't hold your breath.

On the subject of homosexuality, we must be very firm: you absolutely must not maintain the standards of behavior which your religion dictates and which have been the norm throughout human history. We believe that sexuality is a complex and complicated aspect to our humanity, and so we know that we're right and you're wrong. Anybody ought to be able to do anything to anybody else as much and as often as they please. (Also, there is the question of another voting bloc here, and so we will be referring to anything less than total approval as ignorant homophobia. Don't sweat it.)

Since we are too intelligent and enlightened to tolerate mere Christianity or any other traditional religion, we will offer instead our own religious beliefs, which are that good and evil are almost interchangeable, stuff is good and basically there isn't anything to believe in. And you can believe us on this. In fact, we insist that you do. Your religion leads to peace of mind, human dignity and theosis; ours promotes spiritual decay. You see the problem.

We are your story-tellers, and we will present constant meretricious offerings concerning nihilism, the insanity of living and the horror of dying. And just to let you know that we're in touch with your boring little lives, we will occasionally tell you your own story through movies about people that can't wait to leave their backwater towns and girls that have babies in Wal-Mart. Please attend these movies in herds so we can turn around and do ones about the salvific qualities of lawlessness, sexual promiscuity and abortion.

Speaking of Wal-mart -- STOP GOING THERE. We are really, really serious. We would never set foot there ourselves, but it bugs the crap out of us that they exist, seeing as how they run out of business your quaint little shops that we also were never going to.

And STOP driving SUV's. We hate those things too. Don't you realize that your conspicuous consumption will overshadow ours if you drive those boats? Plus, they're big, which just means we have to find something even bigger to drive.

We don't have to be the only ones with strong emotions. We encourage you to despise rich people, who are greedy and mean. But please target rich businesspeople only -- not celebrities or moguls or rock stars or sports figures or recording executives, or anyone who might vote Democrat. They're not despicable -- they're your paisanos, man.

Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.

You won the last presidential election by a large margin. That means we're going to have to ask you to unconditionally surrender. Put down the mandate and back away slowly and no one will get hurt. You really blew it, but we've got more "education" for you on the way -- Michael Moore has kindly agreed to do another Fahrenheit movie. Viewing is NOT optional.

If you don't vote for a Democrat in 2008, we will break your stubby, coal-blackened little fingers. Ha ha. Kidding again. Well, sort of.

Sign here. Or, if you went to public school, make an 'X'.

*****

That's the basic idea. The language probably needs some cleaning up, but I'm thinking they won't have too much difficulty finding a lawyer.

Orthodoxy in the light ...

2004-11-09T14:36:00.000-08:00

Thinking about this post of Hannah's about her being told she's a hippie because she gets overwhelmed by the joys of living and God's creation, I came across this quote by Elder Porphyrios:

Christ is our Friend, our Brother; He is whatever is beautiful and good...
Christ is joy, life, light, the true light, which makes man glad, makes him fly,
makes him see all things ...

Sounds like another hippie to me. ;-)

... and in the shadows

2004-11-08T15:09:00.000-08:00

This follows up the entry above.

I've also been thinking about entries like this one by Alexey. I know the type of thing. I think one of the defining characteristics of my personality is that at a relatively early age I knew really black moods. It's not something I can say I've totally conquered. I've just learned to live with it, (hint: laugh, and the world laughs either with you or at you, and if you're laughing hard enough, you don't care which.) And I learned not to believe in the moods, which takes more work than it might sound like.

It's very hard to describe to someone who is blessed enough not to have experienced it. The closest I've heard is a quote from Nietsche: "The problem with looking into the void is that after a while, it looks back." (I apologize if that's not quite right. I heard it second-hand. I've never quite felt like I could handle Nietsche.)

And, interestingly enough, the same quote from Elder Porphyrios that gave me Hannah's conjoining thought provided some thoughts about the dark places. Here is the complete quote with the additional portions italicized:

Christ is our Friend, our Brother; He is whatever is beautiful and good. He is everything. In Christ there is no gloom, melancholy or introversion, whereas man suffers from various temptations and situations which make him suffer. Christ is joy, life, light, the true light, which makes man glad, makes him fly, makes him see all things, see all people, suffer for all people, and want all people to be with him, close to him.

This is the reason I would never make a good Baptist or evangelical. I need the Church to understand that I live my life both in light and shadow, and give me a context for understanding both.

Will they get religion?

2004-11-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

After my failed attempt here finding a pundit that wasn't talking about religious people as if they were idiots or Martians, I had a little more luck with this article from Slate.com. The cautiously-worded advice that it might be prudent to consider the Christian vote doesn't sound like rocket science to us, but then ... we're Christian. We're aware of the fact that our churches aren't actually filled with bigots, prudes and morons. If that one tidbit of information can be leaked plausibly to the left, my heart will be glad.

Democratic politicians should never forget something simple: Most Republicans and most Democrats are religious. Using faith language is not just about sucking up to their voters, it's about talking to your own base, too—and those Catholics who abandoned the party this year.
On some level, the hardest thing that Democratic leaders, activists, and journalists have to do is honestly ask themselves this: Do you hold very religious people in contempt? If you do, religious people will sense it—and will vote against you. And there are more of them than there are of you.

And by the way, if an article like this ever mentions the Orthodox, I think I'll just die a happy woman. But one thing at a time ...

On this same note, Peter Alexis talks about a little of the one-way street Christians encounter in trying to dialogue with the faith-impaired, and ends with this excellent point:

We are forty percent of the population. We are not shrinking and we are not growing more liberal. They need to deal with us. We hope they do. It is not wholesome that three-quarters of traditional Christians are in one party.

BTW, I'm still thinking about how to talk about the relationship between Christians and the two parties. I understand the sensitivity some feel to the labels, because it can come off sounding as if God abides with one people and not with another, which is insulting, ridiculous and may even be heretical. I trust that none of the people in my religious blogosphere would hold such an opinion, but it may be a time be sure to use the most accurate words. That's something for another entry.

"Kill me now" update

2004-11-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

Odds and ends from the people that want to stick a fork in their head to stop the pain of George Bush's America:

* Come for the maple butter, stay for the political asylum -- Apparently, some of the disgruntled are considering moving to Canada -- famous for geese, bacon and William Shatner. As this article notes, Canada isn't going to do anything particular to speed their entry, but considers itself underpopulated and might benefit from the influx of new people. Though I'm not happy about it, a mass egress from the urban centers to the Land of Bears and Beers would mean two things: (1) I might finally be able to find a parking space in front of Crate and Barrel, and (2) a couple totally hysterical "Green Acres"-style reality shows. (On a side note: need someone to watch your cat, Ms. Sarandon? Can I get those bags for you, Barbra?)

* Confound those Red State homophobes! -- This article from David Brooks provides all the help you'll ever need in combatting the myth that Bush won because religious people turned out in higher numbers to vote down gay marriage. It was really a pretty stupid idea, when you think about it. There were only 11 states that had those measures, and Bush's margin of victory in those states wasn't markedly higher than in the others. The idiocy of thinking that a concern for "moral values" in exit polls must have meant a concern about gay marriage just shows that the left is a little out of touch.

* Scariest quote of the Day After -- Matt Foreman, director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, after noting that activists remain "on the offense" after the election setbacks, added:

What this really demonstrates above anything else is that basic rights should never be put up for a popular vote. That's why we have a Bill of Rights.

Well, since marriage is a cultural institution and not a "basic right," there's absolutely nothing in the Bill of Rights that would apply here. But I doubt if that's the point for Mr. Foreman. What is the point is that what fails with the public can be forced on people through the courts and that, obviously, is the next step.

Thought I found a smart pundit. My mistake.

2004-11-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

This article by Edgar Rivera Colón at Salon.com had a tantalizing intro: Bush, God and Democrats: This country isn't secular or rational. And if the Dems want to win, they can't be either.

I thought for a minute he was going to say something that no one else seems to have grasped, that if the Democratic Party wants to win, it will have to abandon its virtual agnoticism and admit that not only do reasonable, intelligent, socially-responsible, devout Christians and Jews exist, but they will VOTE FOR YOU if you give them half a reason to. But alas...

In a country where upward of 75 percent of the population believes in God and an afterlife (in its decidedly Christian registers), only fools do not avail themselves of such a diverse and vibrant rhetoric for communicating concerns around a whole host of issues concerning justice and what possible ethical and social meanings can be attached to our sojourns here on earth.

Well, the Democratic Party leadership is such a collection of secular and rational fools. There are obvious exceptions in the black churches and the mainline Protestant denominations, but the religious rhetorics of these communities have rarely taken center stage in the last decade or so.
In short, the Democratic Party needs to stop pretending it lives in a secular country. Until French citizens are allowed to vote in U.S. elections (as an old-time Socialist, how I would welcome the advent of that political impossibility), the Democratic leadership will have to fashion its messages for the deeply religious country it presumes to lead one day.

Translation: talk Bible talk to these strange and simple folk, and you'll have them eating out of your hand. From making the point himself that the Dems don't give a voice to religious people, he concludes only that they should adopt the language of religion. So basically offer up the same sound-bytes in some tasty II Thessalonians sauce.

Amazing. Don't they understand that we use the language that we do because we believe it, not just as a mind trip or a posture or a power play? Do agnostic liberals (let's just be crazy and assume the author fits in this category) really not believe that religious people truly and simply believe in God, the Bible and their church? Maybe not.

...Democrats need to make judicious use of the irrational. People are not rational, nor do they make their political choices out of some logic model. Americans voted their fears, their fantasies, their hopes, and their irrationalities. The Republicans banked on these factors and won.

Now that I look at it, I realize that the author isn't even talking about winning over Jews and Christians with this oh-so-subtle verbal masquerade, just the swing voters, undecideds, independents. So even though 75% of the country believes in God, we're still not going to track their messy theism into our nice, clean house.

So, false alarm. I still haven't seen a single commentator on their side that sees any need to give religious people a voice in the Democratic Party. Well, I'll have to search elsewhere for some sign of intelligent life. If they can get this point, I think they'll have a shot in two years of re-taking some of the lost ground. Otherwise, I don't think they will. There. It's that simple, if you ask me.

November 3

2004-11-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

Well now! I know that there are a lot of my brothers and sisters who are either conflicted or downright depressed over these election results, so I'm going to resist the impulse to say "yippee" in all caps. But, y'know, it's been a looonnng darn couple months so I think I get to ... y'know ... yippee

Lots to parse out and lots of info still to trickle in. BTW, here's a fine little map to keep track of the stories as they unfold. And don't forget to take note of what's happening with the gubenatorial and Congressional races, because that's the stuff that will be affecting things more in the immediate future.

I know I'll be treated to a flaying of the following demographics in the mainstream news:
* young voters ("Lazy, do-nothing pups! Why, when I was their age, I'd have voted seven or eight times in one election!!")
* religious people, mostly evangelical Christian. Why do they pick on the evangelicals, do you suppose? They forgot about Catholics? They didn't forget about Orthodox, of course, because they still don't know we're here. But considering the blame-game they want to play, I'm just as glad to escape notice.
* non-urban voters, which is increasingly coming to mean "in-bred, unschooled imbeciles" to blue-staters.
* conservatives -- blah blah blah. Nothing new there.

So in the end, was this the important do-or-die election that it was supposed to be? IMHO, yes, it was. I still maintain that the fever pitch of pure bile that was being spewed into the Democratic Party by left-wingers is what begged an answer from the American people. Not because of Bush or Kerry, but because of what the left's radical elements made of this race. It was obvious that they were demanding vindication of an entire laundry list of left-of-center agenda with this one fell swoop. They gambled big-time ...

... and now they've lost big-time. Presidency, House, Senate -- including the first Senate leader to be voted out in a half century. I don't think the Democratic Party should dry up and blow away -- and in spite of what a hot-head I sound like sometimes, I don't even want that to happen -- but I do think they need to stop kidding themselves. They need to re-invent themselves. They can't keep preaching a lot of things that haven't worked in sixty years and then try to force them on people by a combination of class warfare and petty moralizing. They need to stop thinking that shaking people up is the same thing as inspiring or convincing them.

But I know my take on it is always going to sound like I'm just going for more shots, so I'll leave it at that.

Couple happy surprises out of the election:
* I thought Kerry showed real style to concede without putting the country through weeks of nasty, chad-counting baloney. I'll be honest -- I didn't think he had it in him. But maybe Garry Trudeau did, judging from today's "Doonesbury", which of course he penned weeks ago without knowing how things would go. A day when I agree with Garry Trudeau. The age of miracles is upon us for sure!
* An answer to prayer. Here's my wish from mid-October:

If I can end with one faint conciliatory note, can we please all agree to pray very, VERY hard on Election Day that whatever the results are, they would be decisive? Even if I have to live with President Kerry for four years, I don't want a replay of the 2000 election.

Definitely one of the places where spirituality trumps partisanship. I don't see how anything good could come from a repeat of the weeks of contentiousness after November 2, 2000. I know it sounds like more gloating to be so incredibly pleased that the popular vote was as high as it was, and I'll never know if I really would have been okay with it if Kerry had won, but in any case, I'm so very grateful to everyone that turned out and did their bit.

Election night kibbles and bits

2004-11-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

So at 10pm Central Time, we don't know who the winner is, but the loser is definitely ... the polls.

Good riddance. I sometimes make wild guesses about complex issues just based on my own anecdotal evidence and personal feelings (VERY bad habit. Shows a lack of breeding), and my wild guess for years has been that the more you poll people, the less accurate the results get. People start reacting to poll numbers as if they're real, and changing their opinion -- or saying they're changing their opinion -- from a lot of emotional reasons that don't have bearing on the final result.

And if I'm totally wrong about that, here's my back-up scientific premise: I'm sick of polls. Knowing a whole lot about what a poll said is only one step up from having a lengthy interview with the psychic lady with the bad Jamaican accent.

***

So what about other victory stuff? Well, too early to call at this point. The surprises right now are that New Hampshire is even close (did they secede from New England and forget to tell anyone?) and that Missouri was closer than expected. So considering that the Kerry guys pulled all their ads weeks ago figuring they'd lost Missouri, you can bet there are ritual head noogies being administered over that one.

I'm enough of a simp to be looking at one of the online maps and trying to see how numbers could work. California just went to Kerry (little cries of pure shock fill the nightime skies) which means he's up in electoral votes for the first time in hours. But Florida seems like it's going to go Bush, and so ... whoops, in the time it took me to type that Bush picked up Arizona and I think Idaho, and so now he's ahead 207-197, and he's at about 51-48 for popular vote. So this particular reporter is thinking (a) Bush will win and (b) it's not too late to make marshmallow rice krispie treats if I get on with it. But I might be wrong about (a).

***

So what'll they be talking about tomorrow?
* Gay marriage measures -- not much to talk about other than what we already knew. The American people are largely opposed to the idea of women marrying women and men marrying men. Thank the good Lord for whatever modicum of common sense we still possess. Let's just hope that judges in Ohio, Kentucky and the rest don't overrule.
* Wrong polls, bad polls, polls you can't take ANYwhere -- I'm already seeing the rumblings of this in the blog world as I heard it on Fox news.
* George Clooney's dad isn't going to be a Congressman in Kentucky -- Darn. Bet he's cute. But Democrat. But -- you know -- cute.
* Voting nonsense -- Supposedly new electronic voting machines in Pennsylvania with thousands of votes already in them? Thousands of absentee ballots in Florida that never arrived? And a pool of registered voters here in Missouri that was reported once as being higher than the available population? Hoo boy. It makes you wonder whether these shenanigans always went on or whether a lot of new trick-or-treaters are out for the first time. Anyway, for once I agree with the experts I heard on MSNBC. If the margins of victory are so wide that the goofs don't matter, the stories probably won't have much of a head of steam. And, of course, if none of them plays into minority paranoia about being disenfranchised.
* My marshmallow rice krispie treats -- they always win the popular vote. Ha. Threw that in just because it's late and I'm punchy.

G'night, fellow Ortho-bloggers. Remember, in church I'm friends with people on both sides of the aisle. :-)

Um ...

2004-11-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

... waah.

And Boston and Newport

2004-10-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

Not a long post, but I just feel like I should wind up the report at sea. I won't be at sea much longer. We sail back to New York Harbor and tomorrow morning it's back to the real world.

Well, so to speak. Getting in to New York City just in time for Halloween may not qualify us for the real world. Maybe it's just our way-station.

I'm ready to be done. This morning I had the strong feeling that I was just plain overdosing on all the good stuff, idle time and PEOPLE. When you think of it, it's exactly the opposite of the environment that monastics need. I'm far from being monastic, but I feel a sort of melancholy that's totally out of place in a situation where your every need is being anticipated and provided (or over-provided) for.

But that's not to take anything away from the last two ports:
* Boston was a lot of fun. We got onto a tour-trolley thing, and I think that's the only way you could possibly do Boston justice. It's too big to walk around and it's not really made for foot traffic. The automotive traffic was pretty awful, owing to the influx of people for the parade that I suppose went on today, but that's why you want it to be someone else's problem. And our tour guides, besides having the best Cliff Claven accent a person could ask for, were rock-steady with the traffic mayhem and gave fascinating details. (Did you know that in 1919 a tank full of molasses exploded in Boston and killed 21 people?) Boston has a wealth of history that is really overwhelming. This was my second trip there, and I anticipate another three or four before I feel like I'll be done ogling over the landmarks.

* Newport, Rhode Island -- well, that was another story. The weather kind of tanked on us, turning from damp to drizzley to rainy. And I goofed on the time of our excursion, so we were just left to our own devices. But I don't mean to say it was a waste. Actually, the short time that Greg and I were actually looking about just made it obvious to both of us that there's actually so much to see and do in Newport that we'll have to make our own trip back here. It is Old Money that didn't fall on hard times, and the "cottages" -- absolutely incredible summer home mansions of the well-to-do -- have to be seen to be believed. We toured one of them -- The Elms -- and I'm still thinking about it. Might be another blog entry in there somewhere.

What in the world ...

2004-10-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

... is it with the Episcopal Church?

This article on new pagan rituals for a "woman's communion service" come by way of Fr. Joseph, but are definitely worth a double take.

I'm not learned enough to have a broad ecumenical picture, but hearing the latest about the Anglican side of things is like watching a glacier slipping inexorably into the sea. I imagine that there are many, many horrified parishioners, but there just doesn't seem like there's any coming back for them.

Report from Bah Hahbah

2004-10-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

As someone who only accidentally falls into any sort of trendiness, I'm probably unnaturally impressed with myself that I'm sitting in a woodsy, kitschy-cool combination coffee shop and internet cafe in Bar Harbor, Maine. (We non-Yankees on the cruise ship insist on doing the fakey New England accent and calling it "Bah Hahbah" every single time we say it, but now that I'm here, I haven't heard a single "a-yup" or "clam chowdah". Blast! Do I have to pay for the privilege of local stereotypes? Who knew?)

The husband put us into a bit of a pickle by not having all his work done before the cruise (Bad husband! No biscuit.), but as it turns out, this may not be so bad. It's just a lovely, lovely day out today for the first time so far, but dividing my valuable tourist hours between blogging in the little place with the chocolate-chip cookies, high-speed access and walkthroughs from a black-and-white dog (I'll bet he'd give me an "a-yup" if I asked him nicely), and trolling the little gift ships and hilly, tiny streets may be a fine way to spend the day. Actually, of the two, the former may get the bulk of our patronage. As I mentioned to Greg, there's something really similar about the fare in all the tiny little stores everywhere. The Canadian and Maine ones have more to offer by way of moose, bear, puffin and lighthouse stuff than your basic Corn Belt little-town store. (Missouri not being exactly rife with cultural landmarks, our chotchkes (sp?) tend to feature cows, rivers and the state outline. Not exactly a tourist mecca, the heartland.)

Here's a brief report on the trip so far:
* Oct. 24 -- home to New York: After my near-fatal mistake, I made it to Philly and from there to NY Harbor without any problems, and from there onto the Grand Princess.

I'll say this about the cruise experience -- they really do pull off that feeling of walking onto a four-star hotel. Walking out of the loud, ugly port onto the boat was almost shocking. Suddenly all is clean, posh and plush. Live musicians play away quietly. Elevators sweep along without a sound. Polite little notices await you in your trim stateroom from the purser, the captain, your cleaning staff.

MY cleaning staff? I know it's a bit much, but if you've decided to take a cruise, you've usually already made your peace with it.

* Oct. 25 -- at sea. This day could've been better. Captain Andy had told us in his lovely Scottish accent that we might be expecting some rough weather. Well, we got it, and Gracie the ever-prepared hadn't even thought to bring along the seasickness patches I got for the last cruise. I was kind of amazed to find that I made it to the end of the day before I had to just take to my bed. I belong to the unhappy fellowship of people who get really, REALLY seasick -- watching "Blair Witch Project" made me toss my cookies, and not just because of poor acting. The action of the 15-foot swells Cap'n Andy told us about (I really didn't need to know that, Cap'n Andy.) on the planet-sized boat were naturally not a constant roller-coaster, but when a ship that big is being rocked about, the rolls are very slow and have a lot of weight behind them. So you had to adopt a sort of straddle-legged gait to make it down hallways, ready to put all your weight on one side or another and occasionally just abandoning attempts at sophistication and grabbing for hand-rails on both sides. Going up and down stairs was slow and annoying work, but the elevators could be troublesome as well -- Greg was caught in one for 20 minutes.

* Oct. 26 -- Halifax, Nova Scotia: So it was a bit of a mercy to wake up with the boat docked and NOT moving. It was overcast and cold, but we had a fine adventurous day in town. The guys had hit on the idea of renting a car sometimes and just taking off. This seemed to work well for us. Halifax itself didn't merit a day's worth of sightseeing, but getting away from town and into the country was grand. One of our traveling companions, Donna, is a lobster-nut, and was disappointed because she had heard that the McDonald's in Canada have McLobster. (!! -- words fail me.) It turned out that it was a seasonal thing, and she missed it. Similarly, the locally-ballyhooed Tim Horton donuts didn't turn out to be all that. But just in time to save our tourist dollars from leaving with the tide, we rounded a turn and saw The Arcadian Maple Shop dedicated to all things maple-y, including some that should've been left alone (maple-rhubarb jam?), and a cry went up from all four passengers. Maple is one of those flavors that comes around like a favorite old uncle and everyone's glad to see it. As divergent as the four of us are in other tastes, we happily sniffed, tasted and bought maple stuff. Go, Canada!

* Oct. 27 -- St. John, New Brunswick: I found this town really delightful, in spite of wickedly cold winds that kept anyone from staying out for the whole day. Part of that good impression might really have come from our horse-drawn trolley tour, starring long-suffering Clydesdales Jill and Molly. We were told before we had even quite settled into our seats and adjusted our lap-robes that Jill slacked off and made Molly do all the work on the hills. This information came from our guide Brenda, a charming and entirely unselfconscious woman in her fifties who was ideally suited to tourguiding since she could talk in a constant stream without ever having to draw breath. And all things were good to talk about -- the weather, the landmarks, the gritty realities of riding in a horse-drawn trolley ("We just say that the trolley is powered by natural gas."), her snooty daughter, the price of cigarettes and gasoline in Canada (astronomical), and so on and so on. The benefit of the patter was that as you thought about the possibility of moving to a delightful town like St. John (the oldest city in Canada, named because it was founded on the Forerunner's nativity day), you were also able to imagine what life would really be like. Saint John was hilly, dotted with houses of widely varying eras and quaint. The people seemed unhurried and genuinely friendly with us and each other, as Canadian people so often do. But there's no use even contemplating the dual-citizenship life if you're not willing to accept the weather, the high prices and the limitations of small-town life that come along with its joys. I know something of that last one from the Missouri life, but I might still be in for some surprises.

* Oct. 28 -- Bah H.. oh phooey, Bar Harbor: And here we are again at the cafe. I've gotten some of the Mexican blend coffee, just to broaden the mind, though I eschewed the cinnamon rolls that Greg gave big thumbs up to. I'm starting to find that part of the trick to surviving a cruise without bloating up like a dirigible is being able to say no to 4 out of 5 food opportunities. Greg has found now that he's here that he can't complete his work anyway. We run our own server and it's been knocked out, probably with a little bad weather back home. This necessitates a low-tech solution in the person of Laurie the Pet-Sitter having to schlep to our house, unplug something (the router?) and then plug it back in. Laurie won't be able to do it for a couple hours, so there we are. Funny thing, the internet. Wires and electrons flowing and flying everywhere, but all at a standstill waiting for one switch to be toggled off and then on.

Tomorrow is Boston (I mean it, you guys. I don't want any freaky stuff from gleeful baseball fans.), and then Newport, Rhode Island to look at rich-people houses, and then back to New York on Halloween.

If I get another good window of time, I'll report as needed, but blogging on the boat is a little problematic (for reasons that are worth another entry), so I may just have to wait till I'm back at home-base.

Congratulations and @#%!!

2004-10-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

Wow, Boston! Way to go, folks. I'm not even a baseball fan and I'm impressed.

However, since our cruise gets into Boston tomorrow, can you keep it down? Here's what I don't want:
* parades or other street-clogging activity
* painted human bodies
* shouted slogans and hand gestures I don't understand
* riots or any other fussiness

I'm out of luck, aren't I?

All Hallow's Eve, part II

2004-10-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

After this post of mine about the problems that Halloween poses for us, I felt like I saw a good solution in an article about a local school -- I'm sure it must be a Catholic school. They teach about saints during the month of October and then everyone dresses up as their favorite saint for Oct. 31 (or maybe it's for Nov. 1 -- All Saints' Day. I really should've read the article more carefully.).

Maybe people with kids have already heard of doing this, but I think it's a great idea.

Strangeness and death

2004-10-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

I had a weird thought. And my day became strange.

The day always would have been a little intense. I knew I had to be on a 3:25 flight to go meet up with Greg in Philadelphia, and then the next day at 5 we would set sail on our long-awaited, much-anticipated cruise around New England and Nova Scotia. The day was sort of like one of those Bohemian dances that starts off slow and gets faster and faster and faster. By the time I had the humongous suitcase packed and in the car and the dog off to the pet-sitter, I was doing the thing where you talk to yourself to accomplish little driving tasks. ("Now signal. Now ... turn. Good!")

So as I drew nearer to the airport, I was doing a somewhat convincing imitation of a person who's got it together when Greg called just to check in. He had been running around like mad all day, and I felt bad for him. He was blurting things out and interrupting, more out of fatigue than anything. And out of the blue he said, "And do you have my birth certificate?"

"No," I answered in my best firm-but-gentle voice. "We don't need them for this trip. The cruise line said we didn't need passports."

Silence. And then ...

"That is so wrong. You absoLUTEly need my birth certificate." I hate to admit it but there's something about a husband saying something with that much assurance that makes you believe he might know what he's talking about. I protested a couple more times, but my heart wasn't in it, because my thin coating of complacency was suddenly gone and I was realizing how disastrous this was. It was too late for me to go back home and still catch my plane. I could lead my pet-sitter through an elaborate series of tasks ending with her FedExing these things out to us for Saturday delivery, but it was going to be asking an awful lot, if she could do it at all.

Greg ended the call abruptly with, "Let me make some calls." It would have been rude, except right then, rude was fine with me. I felt like I was in shock. But ... he couldn't be right. I'll bet he's not right. He's not right. It's all okay. He's not right.

He called back. He was right.

BUT we had gotten the day the boat sailed wrong. It was leaving Sunday, not Saturday, and so Greg had already figured out that I could just go home, get my passport and his birth certificate and take a flight out tomorrow. Since my airline ticket was a frequent-flier freebie anyway, it wouldn't cost any more to re-schedule.

It was all so bizarre. From quasi-calm to the brink of disaster and then into real calm ... all in the space of about four minutes. And after a couple of minutes of expressions of relief and disbelief, I started trying to adjust to the new plan. I suddenly had all this TIME. All my work was done, the dog was at the sitter, the house was clean and there weren't any errands to run. Between the intense bustle of getting ready for the trip and the intense exhilaration of taking this vacation, I had suddenly entered this place where labor was ended and my heart could be quiet.

That's when I had the weird thought. "I wonder if this is what it's like to be dead." After all, there I was, between worlds. All my work was suddenly behind me and there was nothing else that needing attending to -- how often does that ever happen to us? And the shock of the adrenalin rush had subsided into a sort of surreal feeling where it seemed like nothing mattered anymore.

I don't say it was a profound thought. I think the reason my mind was inclined toward it is that I found out this morning that a friend's father passed away, and my goddaughter has had two surgeries. Death has been on my mind, even though there are never really any words to your thoughts at those times. (Katie put it exactly right, I thought, in this very moving post.)

Anyway, that's it. I've been trying to sift through it to remember the lesson so I don't forget it. If that was a trial run, I better take note of the fact that I almost left without my passport, which sounds a little too close to the foolish virgins not having oil or the guests to the feast not having a wedding garment.

I better make sure to read the fine print. Nothing worse than a wasted trip.

(P.S: To all the St. Barnabas crowd: I hope you got to know Frank a little. He was kind of a private person, but a very good man. May his memory be eternal.)

The power and powerlessness of hatred

2004-10-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

Hooray! A new find on Karl's list of Ortho-blogs. And Radoje (awfully glad I get to type it and not pronounce it) on this post reminds me of a thought I've had on and off: If Bush is elected, will the intense hatred that a small but virulent percentage of Americans feel for Bush hinder his ability to lead effectively?

Radoje wonders --

What happens if Bush wins? It is no secret that I support Bush despite his imperfections. But living in the Seattle area one sees a level of hatred for Bush that borders on the irrational. I wonder how some of these people are going to take it if Kerry loses.

First of all, am I just TOO out of line if I say a little yay ("...yay...") that any Ortho-blogger other than my lowly self is willing to actually support Bush? I was beginning to think that if he wins, I'll be expected to join an online molieban service. But I digress ...

Out here in a rural area, I won't be exposed to the kind of constant barrage that Radoje and others I know will. But I remember it well from living in other areas. To hear someone discussed every day as if it's an insult to civilization that he draws breath, as if the person is less than human -- it's bad for the soul. If you think I'm exaggerating, consider the offhand remark of an LA Times reporter earlier this month

On a personal level, I despise [Bush] with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

And no, I haven't seen a similar tone from the right. Limbaugh and Hannity and Matt Drudge issue scathing commentary and their share of irreverent humor, but in years of listening, I've never heard any of them say they hated or despised any individual -- just the behaviors, the rhetoric and the ideas. And I think part of the reason that they couldn't get away with it is because the new media is essentially interactive -- they're not trying on the concept of call-ins over at the LA Times. Nope, they're just burning all by themselves with the intensity of a thousand suns. So what in the world happens if their guy tanks on November 2?

I have a feeling some of them are going to go right off the deep end the way some of the extreme right-wing folks did when Clinton got reelected. I think the difference is (speaking in broad generalizations) that when people on the Right get aggrieved, they usually buy 40 acres in rural Idaho and live off MREs in a bunker. When people on the left get aggrieved they start street riots to mobilize the proletariat (OK I'm exaggerating about the proletariat part...).

I'm with him. Given the demographics, a real revolution is out of the question. ("All right, who broke the Starbucks window??!! That's NOT cool!") What will probably happen is a lot of huffing and puffing ... who knows, Maybe Alec Baldwin really will move to France this time. (Don't let the screen door hit you, Alec. Loved you in "Glengarry Glen Ross," though.)

But I don't think it'll be the end of it. Things are changing. I think we're seeing a seismic shift not so much in political parties and election politics but in some social order. I really think all the ballyhoo over Bush is just today's focus. There are people who are losing their sense of identity and they're in real confusion. I could go into more detail, but it's late and I'm not even sure I know what I'm talking about ... probably a good time to let it go.

All Hallow's Eve

2004-10-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

Do good Christians do the Halloween thing? It's a yearly fight at some of the churches I've been to.

Fr. Joseph has this excellent series of posts about it that includes an exchange that sound very familiar:

One of my coworkers came and asked me what I had against Halloween. I asked, "Why do we celebrate Christmas?" "Because of the birth of Christ," she said. "How 'bout Easter?" "Because of the Resurrection," she replied. I went on to ask about the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. But when I asked, "Why do we celebrate Halloween?" -- she had no answer. It was obvious she'd never even considered the question. She ended up by saying, "Because it's fun."

Well, there it is. That's the biggest problem about it, even for Christians. And some aspects of it are definitely fun. And if I had a kid, I don't know that I could hold the line -- would they understand the point, or would they just think that being Orthodox meant that they didn't get to have any fun?

Perhaps it would be an innocent holiday, if we were an innocent people. I think the problem even for non-Christians is that whether they like it or not, they're living in the Church Age. Christ has come -- those who try to turn the clock back to the days when we didn't really know our God do so at their own peril. Almost impossible to convey to non-Christians accurately, of course. Since they imagine that there is no God, you must be saying such things because you are threatened or you are threatening. It can't be that you're just the messenger, otherwise they might have to consider the message.

Anyway, I'm spared such scenes as Fr. Joseph's because I have the good fortune to work at home. Sometimes I decorate the house a little for fall -- I'm willing to celebrate the beauty of God's ever-changing creation. But no skulls, gravestones, evil spirits and the rest. To put them in my house next to the icons of the Theotokos and St. Mary of Egypt is just asking for trouble, IMHO. ;-)

Bush's religious beliefs

2004-10-18T21:20:00.000-07:00

The problem I'm having these days with mainstream media (MSM) (or legacy media, as a wise man calls it) is that they seem to move like the Borg on to a point and then report on it for a while as if it was they were responding to the Clarion Call of the People, rather than following their own edicts about what's going on.

The recent case in point is the respective religious beliefs of Bush and Kerry and what it will mean in the election and the presidency to follow. (Don't you love when these guys paint with a broad brush like this? What the heck do they know about what it will mean for the next four years -- but, hey, it'll sell a boatload of newspapers today!!). Here at the House of Grace, we get three newspapers for reasons that deserve their own blog entry, and last Saturday all three of them were sporting this same story with editorials and news analysis as well. It was as if Bush had answered an altar call and Kerry had gotten, um, Catholicized (sorry, don't know the routine) on the road on Friday.

I suppose some of the reason that that all the MSM awoke to the fact that we are on the verge of electing actual Christians (or professing Christians, if you choose to remain skeptical) is because Kerry made a thing out of it at the third debate. I'm guessing that somebody told him it would be a good idea, but the same guy probably told him that bringing up Dick Cheney's daughter would be good for a laugh. Because it just confused the Christian conservatives ("Fred, did Kerry just say something about God?" "Can't be. Must be getting sound from TBN again."), but it horrified Kerry's base.

This is already old news, but worth bringing up just because the Always Great James Lilek delved into the phenomenon with this story in the NYT from an economist who says, among other things:

“Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.”

Bush: And what'll we do tomorrow, God?
God: The same thing we do every day, George -- plan to take over the world! (Something for the Pinky fans).

Nothing new in the MSM's view of Christians as dangerous and weird, but I thought James got to a very incisive point with his answer to the charge that Bush's rampant zeal (yeah, right -- the guy prays) is the reason that he wants to kill all the terrorists:

I guess Bush wants to kill them all because his religious beliefs make him disinclined to be persuaded, and extreme in his convictions. Ergo agnostics want to kill only some terrorists, and atheists don’t want to kill any? Look. The problem some people have with Bush isn’t that he believes in God, it’s that he really believes in God. To a certain stratum of our intelligentsia, you’re supposed to believe in God like you believe in continental drift, or the tides, or the yearly reappearance of Shamrock Shakes at McDonald’s. The idea that it’s a two-way conversation strikes many as nonsense, proof that we’re dealing with someone two steps removed from worshipping the moon.

Yep. That's the way it gets reported. As if a president who really reads the Bible instead of just taking it along to photo ops is the scariest thing imaginable. And it's not. The scariest thing imaginable is that all the Borg will decide that the next big story is Teresa Heinz-Kerry's baby pictures. Do you think she ever had irises in her eyes, or were they always solid black like that? It's too creepy for words. I'm never buying ketchup again.

*****
If you didn't like that part of Lileks' Daily Bleat, how about this priceless hint for the director of "The Day After Tomorrow"?

You remember that scene where the guys in the Scottish station are sitting around pounding the Balvenie, knowing they're going to die, and one of the guys is talking about never seeing his son grow up as if he's describing a lottery ticket he lost six years ago that may or may not have had the winning numbers? Bookmark that scene should you ever wake in the middle of the night wondering "do I suck, completely?"

Cricket trivia scam alert!

2004-10-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

If you can't trust Paul Harvey, who can you trust?

For those of you who don't know, Paul Harvey is a guy who has done little "lighter side of the news" radio commentary for years and years ... well, actually for several centuries. Paul Harvey could solve a lot of history's mysteries just by casting his mind back. But you can still hear him for about 45 minutes on certain radio stations (usually the ones that are going for some folksy charm, or else just have trouble filling an entire programming day) telling you little news stories about stupid thieves, old ladies with weird pets, goofy things that people said and (getting to my point, as I sometimes do) ... little bits of folk wisdom.

And so Mr. Harvey saith: If you want to know what the temperature is, listen to how many times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds and add 40.

And I said to the radio, "What?"

And he repeated the whole thing for me again (who says radio isn't an interactive medium?): If you want to know what the temperature is, listen to how many times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds and add 40.

I want credit for the fact that even riding along in my car with other things on my mind, that just sounded problematic. Fourteen seconds? How am I going to know when fourteen seconds is up? I can't count "Mississippi's" or I'll lose track of the cricket chirps. If I just count the chirps, I'll misjudge the seconds and decide that the crickets are telling me it's 312 degrees outside. (I'm not very good at judging seconds.) And Paul Harvey didn't even tell me whether it was Fahrenheit or Centrigrade. I mean, it was probably Fahrenheit, but how do I know? Maybe he was feeling European today.

Still, Mr. Harvey didn't get where he is today by not knowing what's interesting trivia. I thought about it, and just now when I took the dog out, I thought about it again. The crickets were doing their little bit for me, and I thought, "Now's the time to avail myself of the ancient Native American ways." Except it just turns out to be the most utter crap.

You can't count the cricket chirps because they're all going at the same time. They don't take turns, and one cricket sounds a whole lot like another. And you can't look at your watch and hope to count cricket chirps while looking at seconds because ... (probably everyone is way ahead of me) ... it's DARK outside.

Talk about irresponsible reporting! I think Paul Harvey just makes this stuff up by day and then cackles himself to sleep all night. And by the way, I just looked it up on the internet -- it's 51 degrees, and yes, that's Fahrenheit.

Once more into the breach

2004-10-16T15:43:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to find that discussions are still going on about Dr. Bouteneff's article (with Dr. Bouteneff himself chiming in, so no one needs to worry about him being misrepresented). Those who are tired of hearing about all this will undoubtedly want to give it a miss.

For my own peace of mind, I feel like I have to try to get to the bottom of the Orthodox objections to George Bush just once. This is probably a complete exercise in futility, but I would swear that there are some obvious points that aren't being made. So here's some of what I'm hearing:

* "Bush doesn't reflect Orthodox values." -- And neither does Kerry. And I'm pretty sure that none of the Little Division of Hallmark Cards parties do either. Saint Herman of Alaska isn't running this year. When Orthodox are more than 1% of the US population, maybe we can do something about that. Until then, there's the one guy, the other guy, or the little guys. Which one do you think is closest? Vote for that one. Go to church. Pray for your new president.

* "Terrible war crimes and atrocities are going on. Bush has to pay." -- And the idea is that under the leadership of President Kerry, there will be no civilian casualties, no loss of life, no need to interrogate anyone? The idea of an unobtrusive war is a delusion.

* "We shouldn't be at war at all. Kerry will get us out." -- What are the odds? He won't even go on record (unequivocably, that is, which is always the difficulty with Kerry) that he thinks it's a good idea to withdraw. He seems just as happy saying that we need to have more troops, and since his good friends over at France, Germany and Russia (whose checks from Saddam have finally all cleared the bank -- praise be!) have said that they won't chip in, that would mean more Americans.

* "George Bush has done [insert unspeakably awful, improbable and weird accusation]." -- This is the rule: If you see "Farenheit 9/11", go see "Farenhype 9/11". If you read the New York Times, read the New York Post too. If you listen to NPR, listen to talk radio. Think of it as equal time. Just listening to one side these days will make you certain that the person in question ought to be sent to prison forever.

* "We don't have respect in the global community anymore." -- Actually, these days, they don't have much of my respect, but I bet they're okay with that. Anti-Americanism isn't new, and the only way I can imagine that Kerry could mollify the EU and Muslim hotheads is by appeasing them with a lot of lip service and gratuitous obsequiousness. Which he's probably good at, for what that's worth. But I don't see that appeasement has worked all that well for us in the last twenty years. Can someone please stop to remember the other terrorist attacks -- the World Trade Center in 1993 (6 dead), the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 (19 dead), U.S. Embassy bombing in East Africa in 1998 (291 dead) and more -- that showed terrorist networks growing steadily in size, ability and sophistication, and in response to which the U.S. took no aggressive action? Were we "respected" in the global community then? Maybe so, if appeasers love other appeasers, but I don't remember the halcyon days when we were hearing our praises sung in faraway lands for the mere price of the "nuisance" (thanks, Senator) of growing loss of life. And if I'm just missing it, is it worth it to be popular? The strikes on 9/11 were not unpremeditated. They were not out of the blue. We had been warned over and over that the extremist factions of Muslim weren't going to be content with just talking trash and burning effigies forever. We did nothing. Now we're doing something. And if the global community doesn't like it ... well, words fail me. It's nothing that they shouldn't have been doing for decades.

* "Political right and left have no meaning to us Orthodox. Both parties are the same. They're both bad. Bush and Kerry are both bad." -- I've heard this one now more times than I would've believed possible. If you think that there's no difference between them, then you're in a tiny, tiny minority. Christians have overwhelmingly found a more receptive ear at the GOP. That doesn't make it God's party or mean that Christians can't exist outside of that, but as a generalization, it's historically and presently true. The party has not conformed to our views on everything (how could it? Even we don't agree -- have you checked out an Orthodox list-serv lately?), but since I don't believe the arguments against Bush based on the war (see above), I'd have to say that the Republicans' record on life-or-death issues is far better to me than the Democrats'.

* "Democrats have a better stand on equality, social programs and ending poverty." -- Important to be clear-headed here. The Democrats' stand on any of these good things is that you put more power and more funds into the hands of the government, and they do it for you. So voting Democrat because of the wonderful programs they espouse is the same as going to a rich uncle and telling him to give to the poor, feed the homeless, take care of the sick, and so on. The conservative viewpoint on these things is that you can do those things better than the govenrnment can, and the only thing they can do for you is to not tax you so heavily that you have no alms to give.

* "The Democrats are friendlier to the environment." -- But in my personal experience, all the good environmentalism in the world is of no worth without the context of Orthodoxy that is so lacking on the left. Liberals have picked up words like 'stewards' lately, but their concept of stewardship has nothing to do with personal sacrifice and self-restraint, and everything to do with arresting every new sign of development they can see. Apart from Christian virtue, environmentalism seems destined to become a false god.

* "Republicans are in the pocket of big business." -- And Democrats are in the pockets of trial lawyers, labor unions, show-biz people and lots of other unsavory types, besides having their own agenda of growing the government bigger in order to keep their power. Not sure if there's a clear winner there. I see less threat in big business, but that might just be me.

* "It's just a choice between the evil party and the stupid party." -- Okay, here maybe I'll surprise somebody. I know I come off like a smart-aleck, so it might sound disingenuous of me to say, but that language offends me coming from an Orthodox person. I leave it to secular people to throw words like 'evil' around as if they have no meaning. In weak moments, I probably have thought of liberals as stupid, and I'm not proud of that, but to have a fellow Orthodox brother or sister tell me that I would willingly associate with something evil is a foul thing to say. If you want to go for the same impact, and you dislike Republicans that much, how about 'mean' or 'greedy'? I still think it's inaccurate, but I can live with it.

That's my take. The usual disclaimer is in place about these just being my impressions. I'm not a pundit, even by blog standards.

If I can end with one faint conciliatory note, can we please all agree to pray very, VERY hard on Election Day that whatever the results are, they would be decisive? Even if I have to live with President Kerry for four years, I don't want a replay of the 2000 election.

Lord, have mercy on all of us.

Apocalypse watch -- ten minutes and counting

2004-10-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

I knew it. They're talking about putting microchips into people, and folks can't wait.

So what's the problem, right? It's just a thing to help people with complex medical problems get quicker care by being able to communicate more complete and accurate health record information.

I've got two problems with this. One is already hinted at if you make it to the end of the article. Consider these two little throwaway graphs:

... Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

...Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.

Problem number one: no matter how isolated the proposed use for this chip is at present, once it's linked into security and electronic payment, its popularity will explode.

What I'm really expecting to see within ten years is a microchip that turns you into a walking telephone/e-mail receiver and sender. The same technology plus GPS could be used to determine anybody's whereabouts at any time in question, making many crimes a cinch to solve.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the technology exists now. It's the climate for its proliferation that doesn't exist. The current generation is cautious about such threats to privacy and freedom, and wouldn't throw that away for convenience and a lower crime rate. But I don't think the next generation will see it the same way. There are some forces in modern culture that have become runaway trains -- constant communication, immediate transfer of funds, unhindered medical research advances and complete personal safety being some of the fastest accelerating ones.

It all sounds ludicrous, and the idea of having a chip implanted would be too horrible for most people to do it. But only a generation or so ago, test-tube babies were unthinkable. Sex change operations. And of course my favorite -- cloning. Given enough time, the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then -- if it seems to follow the general trend toward making life move along faster than it does now -- it becomes acceptable, desirable ... and finally, like all the other advances that have taken a little bit of our humanity, it becomes worth whatever cost we have to pay for it.

That's my second problem with the microchip idea. It seems to me that whenever we take these bold new steps, we pay for them. From the time of the Industrial Revolution on, we've been striding forward, moving out. Better lives, more things -- faster, cleaner, safer, more affordable, better quality. But we never want to notice the things that are lost to pay for them. We've got speedy transportation -- but we've got paved landscapes, air pollution and daily fatalities. We've got a dizzying array of affordable goods -- but we've got a trade agreement with China and a country where over half the people are overweight.

In short, these technological advances seem to me like deals with the Devil, and our recent inclination has been to pay.

Last debate debotted (new verb)

2004-10-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Well, just so much same-same for the third debate. I thought both men looked more tired than in the last two debates, but who could blame them for that? I've only watched the debates and I feel a year older. So certainly I can be excused for having an impish little desire to see:

* a clean judo flip at the end instead of that high-principled hand-shake. I mean, who are we kidding?

* similarly, the Teresa Heinz-Kerry/Laura Bush smackdown. Teresa looks like a born ankle-biter to me, but there's something just weird about how Laura Bush smiles. I think she might have some Chinese stars tucked away up a sleeve somewhere.

* the commentator fake Kerry out just once:

Commentator: Sen. Kerry, do you smell cheese?
Kerry: Well, as your president I want America to realize that I do smell cheese. I certainly do. I think that's one of the biggest differences between myself and the president. And just as I did when I was fighting for my country for four whole months ... and I mean, I think that it's indicative of the president's failed policies that ... um ... I'm sorry, did you say 'cheese'?

* or mess with Bush:

Commentator: Mr. President, want a deep-fried Twinkie?
Bush: Hell, yeah. HELL, yeah.

But as usual, I'll have to settle for reality. Bummer.

Superman

2004-10-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

By now everyone has heard that Christopher Reeve died Sunday of cardiac arrest. I can admit here, in this somewhat private setting, that though anyone's death is a loss, I greet the news with a small amount of relief. That sounds terrible of me, so I better elaborate. I hope I can put my thoughts accurately into words.

I know very little about Christopher Reeve, but I want to remember him for the example he was to me shortly after the 1995 horse-riding accident left him a quadriplegic.

My admiration wasn't based the idea that he was a hero (I feel that people overuse that word to include everyone who ever has a public battle with much of anything). I was thinking more of the Orthodox perspective of tragedy. We believe that even these things are gifts from God. We believe some people have the gift of tears, the gift of pain. These are mysteries to ponder. In that context, it means that God chose this prominent, young, athletic movie actor to suffer in this way. (As I said, this isn't a point of view I'd try to express outside of Orthodox circles. People would think I was crazy or that my faith was mean, or both.) I can't know why God chose Reeve for this, but when I try to think of any other actor or actress and what they would have done in this circumstance, I feel that he had a grace that transcended the usual truculence and self-centeredness of celebrity. He didn't blame anyone, he didn't want to complain or act as if nothing happened. At least not at first.

As time went on, that seemed to change. He started saying things like "I am going to walk again", which struck me as classic show-biz superciliousness -- out of all the people who have had crippling spinal injuries, he would be the one who would walk again. By virtue of what? His money? His fame? His personal decision not to accept quadriplegia? As if it doesn't take more raw courage to accept the paralysis and just live every day. And he went from being a spokesman for spinal cord injury research to being an activist for stem cell research and a critic of administrations that didn't do enough to further his vision of himself as whole and ambulatory. My problem with his activism wasn't just my personal opposition to stem cell research, but the sense of mourning at losing a hero.

His death will be an occasion now for the Biography channel to run the story of his life, which I would like to see. And activists will invoke his name as if he died from a complete lack of the cells taken from embryos. So the former will call him a hero and the latter will call him a martyr. He's neither to me. He's someone that was given a gift that he may or may not have been able to accept.

The Vatican and the war

2004-10-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

Interesting article here about the Vatican deciding to change position on the war in Iraq. I particularly think this viewpoint is trenchant:

"The child has been born," [Cardinal Sodano] declared recently on behalf of the Vatican. "It may be illegitimate, but it's here, and it must be reared and educated."

I wish I could've gotten more of the context to know what 'the child' is. Is it a democratic Iraq (which would explain the need to be reared and educated) or a war-torn Iraq, which would make more sense but not explain the rest of the metaphor?

Presidential boondoggle

2004-10-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's my imitation of Kerry at last night's debate:

Normal person:

Sen. Kerry, can you tell me what you would do about healthcare/the deficit/my son's low SAT scores?

Kerry:

I can, and I want to be very clear about this. This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace. He is the first president in 72 years to have lost as much money as he did. Remember: the No Child Left Behind plan does nothing to alleviate the untold suffering of AIDS victims in the coalition that he says he has built but which is really nothing more than four Australians and a dog named Mokie. Under his plan, the nuclear materials in Russia would take 13 years to be dealt with; under my plan my family can do it this weekend. I have a plan. I do indeed have a plan. Sometimes I get my plan out at night and pet it. And the American people have a right to that plan which is my plan and which will be their plan after November 2. Thank you.

You think I'm messing with you? I am not messing with you. The first part of the debate was Kerry's Publishers Clearing House Giveaway of talking points.

It might also have been a mistake for him to look right into the camera that one time. Now, to be fair, it wasn't his idea. Somebody asked a question that was something like, "Can you look right into the camera and tell the American people that you will never raise taxes?" So of course Kerry jumped right onto that opportunity to look like a straight-shooter, but I tell you, man, when he swung that big ol' face dead center and about a foot away from the camera, I was hoping that anyone that had kids had already put them to bed. I promise not to harp on this if Kerry wins, but he's just a little scary-looking, you know?

But I'm not saying that he had all the bad moments. I think they both suffered occasionally from the format where one of them is sitting on his little stool, mike in hand, while the other one is talking, like Sonny Bono just waiting for one of his lines in "I Got You, Babe". Kerry opted for getting a faraway look that I don't think worked well for him. Bush did this blinking thing. I don't know if there were lights in his eyes or what, but he got real blinky when he was waiting his turn. It didn't make him look like the sharpest tool in the shed.

Okay, but enough of the cheap shots. On to the countdown: I'd say Bush won last night, but I'm pretty sure Kerry supporters would say he did. Maybe a better thing to say would be that anyone that liked Kerry at the last debate liked him again, and anyone that really wanted Bush to do better last time was satisfied.

I definitely was. He wasn't vague -- his thoughts were focused, he wasn't at a loss for words. I thought he answered questions in a more linear way than Kerry, and he made his arguments well. The question now is if people really want to hear what he's saying. I think that people in this country really want to do something that matters. I don't think they're as afraid of being grown-ups as Baby Boomers were in their 20's and 30's. So if they believe, at the end of the day, that this war matters, that it's not just a pathetic blunder, I think they'll elect Bush. It's very hard to avoid the conclusion that we're in Iraq based on faulty intelligence, but does that make it the wrong war at the wrong time?

There are other issues, of course, but I'm thinking that this one really trumps the rest.

Just me thinking, of course.

Debate difficulties

2004-10-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm still not sure whether I'm going to watch the debate tonight or not. It's pretty grueling really, and it makes for a real edgy 90 minutes, especially since this one features Real People (or nearly. Remember that lunkhead in 2000 with the ponytail who told the candidates to treat us all like children?).

There are two main threats to my health if I decide to watch:

* Bush Hoarseness -- If he doesn't pull it together better than he did last time, I'll lose my voice shouting hints to the TV screen. ("We didn't have the armor for the troops because HE DIDN'T VOTE FOR IT! TELL HIM THAT!!" "His RECORD! TALK ABOUT HIS STINKIN' RECORD!!") This debate is even further away from me than the last one, so I don't think there's any possiblity he'll be able to hear me.

* Kerry Brain-fever -- Trying to figure out what he just said will put you in a sort of weird insensate fog after a while. Example: yesterday reporters asked Kerry if he thought he would commit more troops. Is that hard? It's a yes or no question. Even given some need for nuance and not wanting to commit yourself, it still shouldn't be more than a sentence or two. Here's some of what Kerry responded:

I will do what the generals believe we need to do without having any chilling effect, as the president put in place by firing General Shinseki, [this is a lie, by the way, but it's one of Kerry's favorite lies so we won't see an end to it soon] and I'll have to wait until January 20th. I don't know what I am going to find on January 20th, ... Now, I just don't know. I can't tell you. What I'll tell you is, I have a plan. I have laid out my plan to America, and I know that my plan has a better chance of working. And in the next days I am going to say more about exactly how we are going to do what has been available to this Administration that it has chosen not to do. But I will make certain that our troops are protected. I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, and I will make sure that we are successful, and I know exactly what I am going to do and how to do it.

Well, um, glad to hear it, but WE don't know exactly what you're going to do and just telling us that you do has worn pretty darn thin. And by the way, if you really had laid out your plan to America, you WOULDN'T STILL HAVE REPORTERS ASKING YOU QUESTIONS LIKE THIS!!!

(cough, cough) Excuse me, I think I need to get some more cough drops. I've been buying them in bulk these days.

Oh, so THAT's what we have a vice-president for

2004-10-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well now!

I'm watching the Cheney-Edwards debate as I type. For those of you who missed it, here's the story:
* Edwards starts in with some of the talking points that Kerry has been trying to turn into this year's soundtrack ("90% of the casualties and 90% of the cost", "plan for winning the peace")
* Cheney has met every attack equably, competantly and completely. He isn't looking dour, he isn't looking at all peevish -- but he's meeting facts with facts, he's meeting disinformation with information. Actually, he's reminding me of the fighting dog (named Andrew Jackson?) in Mark Twain's story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" who wouldn't move or fight until the other dog had worn himself out, then get hold of the dog's back leg and keep the grip until the fight was over.
* A couple times Edwards actually got flustered. I don't care what your politics are -- there's something about seeing a slick lawyer dude with hair as good as Edwards stammering around that's just precious.
* As with Lehrer throwing Bush a baiting question that he batted away, the moderator's invitation to to Cheney to nail Edwards for being a nasty old trial lawyer became instead an opportunity for both men to change gears. The debate got more mature after that, but it also got more boring. I'm guessing this is where a lot of people changed channels.
* We're now at 9:20, and it seems like Edwards is trying to get in a couple last licks. Don't know if this is just a going-out-of-business sale, a second wind, or if he was hoping to lull Cheney into a false security.
* Cheney is still unflappable. I think the only time he was actually cranky was in chiding Edwards for undermining the sacrifice of Iraqis, and it was entirely appropriate. In addition, Cheney has managed to do something that Bush unbelievably missed -- put the glaringly bad voting records of both Edwards and Kerry in their senatorial careers back under scrutiny.
* I almost get the impression that these two, who are fairly evenly matched, have a certain respect for each other, though of course you won't get them to talk like they have the same opinion on anything. Wouldn't be surprised if these guys get a beer somewhere afterward, if no one is looking.

Bottom line on Edwards: I think he might've underestimated Cheney and overestimated his own charm and considerable abilities to make people feel like he's said something when he hasn't
Bottom line on Cheney: Certainly acquitted himself very well. Hard to believe that people were saying a few months ago that Cheney was a liability that Bush should do without. I think Cheney turned it back into a shootin' match.

Bottom line on the debate: This one seemed really worthwhile to me, but I'm betting that most people didn't hang in there for the whole thing. Just as well by my reasoning, since Cheney did better in the first half.
Sound-byte for the right: They're gonna love Cheney saying that Edwards' hometown paper has started referrring to him as 'Senator Gone'.
Sound-byte for the left: Hmm. Not sure, really. Probably made the best connection probably when he said in response to Cheney's take on the war picture that 'people can SEE what's happening in Iraq.' And judging from the little bit of spin I'm hearing in the post-mortem, they seem intent on portraying Cheney as 'grumpy and mean', in the words of Mary Beth Cahill.

Bush & reality

2004-10-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone would believe me that I have some non-partisan comments to make about Bush, but I'll try anyway.

Reading through the roundtable interview with the president in the latest "Touchstone" magazine (sorry, this article is unavailable online as well. I'm not getting a kickback from these guys -- really, I'm not.), I felt myself getting restless. Bush isn't doing as well in the polls, I'm mulling over his hapless performance at the debate last week -- I was looking for some kind of reason to feel good about it all.

The author, James Kushiner, didn't seem to be obliging me. As he reports on the meeting that Bush had with nine Christian editors, Kushiner appears to be looking for something as well and not finding it. He reports about the security check, he tells of seeing Teddy Roosevelt's Nobel peace prize. When Bush enters and begins, Kushiner is dutifully lifting a few quotes, but his focus is so obviously not on Bush's words that you can almost feel your own eyes wandering around the room. Bush talks to them about homeland security, about faith-based initiatives, about taking a stand against same-sex marriage ... his words seem right, but not new. Nothing unexpected. I think if I had been in the room, I might have been wondering at this point, "What are we here for? What do you want from us? We could've read all this in a press release."

It seems to me that the further away Bush gets from the usual talking points, the more his own unique voice comes out. He talks about the need to express faith openly ("People say, 'When do you pray?' I pray at all times. All the time."), about meeting the Pope, about the place of Israel ("I've been to Israel. I view it as the Holy Land as well. I view it as a precious piece of ground."). These aren't the big vote-getting topics, and his speech doesn't seem crafted. It's as if he really wanted to tell Christian writers about how he sees these things.

When Bush is finished talking, someone asks him what the hardest aspect of the war is for him personally.

The president didn't flinch. "The death. That's the hardest part of any war. Knowing that a mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter is lonely and sad and grieves because of the loss of a loved one ... Part of my job is to comfort as best I can. I also get sustained by the loved ones. ... You hear amazing statements from the mouths of these grieving souls that many times are inspired by the Almighty. It's a powerful reaffirmation of faith -- how the grief comes -- such hopeful words and such sustaining words."

I can't read this without remembering him speaking about this during the debate, and it seems as it did then -- artless, incautious. Genuine. These aren't the sound-bytes of someone who is posturing. It was almost as if at that point in the debate, he wanted to communicate something that he considered of more importance than who is the next president. It was as if he wanted most of all to tell everyone what it's like to be the president who sends Americans to war and spends time with the grieving and wounded and hears what they say. And wants to put it into words that the rest of us will understand.

After the panel ended, Kurshiner says

I asked one of the other participants who has known Bush for years what he is really like, and he answered, "What you see is what you get." That's what impressed me as well.

I guess that's what I consider an amazing thing, so amazing really that it just dawned on me after seeing Bush last Thursday: He's managed to hold on to his humanity to a surprising degree. It seems like what you see is what you get. He was acting annoyed with Kerry because he was annoyed with Kerry. He almost forgot all the rules of the debate and started arguing with him about whether or not to have multi-lateral talks with North Korea.

I can keep my promise that these observations aren't meant as partisanship. This ingenuousness might even seem to some like a liability. It might seem inappropriately naive or immature. Maybe they think Bush is heartless or foolish.

But it will have me tuning in to the next presidential debate looking at it with different eyes. It must be amazing to have had the experience of a war-time president. I want to see what else of that Bush can't put into words.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping ...

2004-10-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

... into the future.

Ten points if you remember that line from "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band. It's a repetitive little ditty, so that line has a way of being on the permanent sound-track in my head when I'm wondering where the day went, as I do most days.

My relationship with time is a deep and a troubled thing. I love it in its abundance; I hate it in its paucity. I love it when I think I'm free; I hate it when I know I'm enslaved. My husband noted once that I covet time like other people covet things. I wish he'd have been wrong, but he's not. I belong to the sad little group that Uncle Screwtape advised Wormwood about, those who consider time as somehow belonging to them and any unexpected loss of time as the moral equivalent of robbery.

So I'm always looking for little helps like the half-page commentary in the latest "Touchstone's" Quodlibet section entitled, "The Redemption of Wasted Time". The author S. M. Hutchens makes a brief and elegant case for the fallacy of the entire human notion of wasted time for two reasons:

The first is that, ultimately, the meaning of our existence is not a matter of our will, nor is its direction in our control except in a qualified way ... Who knows but that from [God's] point of view, the principal reaon for our creation may have been to speak a single word in the place He wanted it spoken, a word that we may have forgotten in a moment, but for which we were born?

In other words, how do I know whether time is wasted or not when I can't know as God does what I was created to do? If I'm cursing one of the many intervals in daily life when I can't move as fast as I want or get to the next place as soon as I want, it's worth considering how little my estimation of where I "should" be is worth.

Sobering stuff. And Hutchens' second reason is even more profound:

The second and even greater reason that it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to be judges of wasted time in any ultimate sense is because of the redemption of time by its Lord, the way in which all that comes to pass is involved in the apokatastasis pantoon where even evil becomes subject to His perfect will through the death, resurrection and glorification of the Son of God, in whom, by whom, and for whom all things were created, most particularly those who love Him and in whom is found the desire to do His will.

He gives an example of a farmer making provisions for livestock, noting that even though the cow will die and the farmer will die, God will remember that little act of good stewardship.

'I go to prepare a place for you ...' means exactly this. The Carpenter, who is building even now, does not do it with nothing, but with the substantial proceeds of redeemed time. It is He who determines its worth, and He alone who is competent to determine what time has been well or ill spent.

Harry Potter as juvenile delinquent

2004-10-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

The latest Touchstone magazine has a compelling feature entitled "Jump into Bedtime Stories" about the proliferation of literature for teenagers with very questionable content. (Sorry, the article isn't available from their magazine online, so if you're curious, you'll just have to pick up a copy.) The author, Sharon Dever notes:

This development is not going unnoticed. In a recent article for the New York Times titled "Summer Reading Blues", Barbara Feinberg laments the displacement of the magical and adventurous in juvenile fiction by grittily realistic "problem novels" in which adolescents are plunged into soul-crushing situations.

Ah, I remember it well. What a disappointment it was to enter the world of juvenile fiction and discover that the standard fare included books that were angst-ridden, whiny and annoying. Gone were the wonderful fantasy worlds of Narnia, the Phantom Toll-booth and the Hundred-Acre Wood, and after trying to like the grotty stories about teenagers dealing with mental illness, drugs and divorce -- none of which, thank God, had any relevance to me -- I reverted back to my favorites or went for the older classics by Dumas and Dafoe and Melville (pretty much insuring complete nerdiness, but that's another story).

So what's a parent to do? Well, these days there's Harry Potter, of course, but as Elizabeth observed in a comment to Huw, the latest book is very different. Harry isn't a wide-eyed 10-year-old anymore. He's a sullen, self-absorbed, irritable 15-year-old who's short on patience, self-restraint and gratitiude and big on HAVING BURSTS OF TEMPER IN ALL CAPS. You can hardly stand him.

And worse than what happens to Harry in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is what happens to the magical, incredible world that Rowling made us love at Hogwarts. The wonders that once amazed and impressed both Harry and the reader are now commonplace and unnoteworthy -- moving staircases, talking objects, classes in spells and incantations. Suddenly they're not just ordinary, they're often bothersome, annoying and sometimes downright malevolent. Anyone who can read "Phoenix" and find joy or happiness anywhere in it will have to let me know where.

If it sounds like I didn't like the book, that's not quite right. I have a feeling, though I don't know if I'm right, that Rowling is doing something very interesting. She's not only taking us through Harry's feelings as his age progresses, but through his world-view. There isn't really much to suggest to a discerning reader that Hogwarts and the magic world are any less magical than they were, but they turn out to be more subtle, more dangerous and more complicated. Ten-year-old Harry came out of a closet of innocent ignorance into the magnificence of a world that opened up new wonders all around him. Things were better than he ever believed they could be, and he had a place in it all. Gradually, that world has gotten smaller, darker and more truly dangerous, and the evil that has been gathering since the first book is coming closer, taking shape and taking better and better aim at him and at everything else that's good.

If I'm even right that Rowling is doing this on purpose, is it a good idea? She's doing a more sophisticated job of what the 'young adult' literature is trying for these days -- expressing the world as it seems at one of the most confusing and tumultuous times of a person's life in the interests of ... what? Being relevant to readers that age? Reminding old children like me what it was like? Selling more books?

In Rowling's case, of course, she manages all three. In the case of less-gifted authors than herself -- and there are many, many of them -- it may just serve to turn off most juvenile readers and drive some of the hardier souls like myself into books quite a bit over their heads. Though I can still name all four musketeers, if you want.

I just love "Joan of Arcadia"!

2004-10-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

(This is a rave review that's pretty late in coming, since the show's been on for a year or two, but last night's episode reminded me of everything I like about it.)

When I heard that there was a TV show about a high school girl that has encounters with God every week where He tells her something to do, I might have made a snorting noise out loud or I might have only thought it. After all, has television really helped the cause of religious people with shows like "Highway to Heaven" and "Touched by an Angel"? (Although I admit I was a fan of the latter until I realized that their message was never going to be any more than "Smile -- God loves you." Certainly a nice sentiment, but hardly enough to get us through the days of terrorist threats and genocide.)

But my reticence notwithstanding, we tuned in to "Joan" one Friday night. We've been hooked ever since. There are episodes so complex, painful and difficult that I puzzle over them all week. There are others that lighten my heart in a way that is completely unique to me in a lifetime of watching the boob tube (does anybody call it that anymore?). Most amazing of all is that it isn't easy to keep up with what they manage to say every week about what it means to live life with faith in a real and active God.

"Joan" definitely outguns the other shows that mention heaven and angels, both in its depth and its quality. Those shows get bogged down in the question of whether or not there is a God, and end up showing one moment of a person's life when they might meet one of God's messengers as if that moment were all that would happen in their lives. There is obviously much more power in the premise that the protagonist won't meet a messenger but God Himself. And she won't meet Him just once in her life (very Born Again mentality there, if you ask me), but often and regularly. She doesn't always know what shape He'll take -- God has been an old woman, a little girl, a street musician, a dog-walker. The things that God will say may not make sense at the time -- He may ask her to take an art class or give her abiguous exhortations like 'get involved' or 'keep your eyes open'. And, in the aspect that I find the most insightful by far, what He says might not make sense even by the end of the show. You may be left with questions, not of God's goodness or omnipotence, but of Joan's ability (and ours) to fathom His purpose.

Stylistically, the writing bears no resemblance to some of the greeting-card sappiness to be found on the PAX network perenniels. I can pay the show's writers the enormous compliment of saying that I've never found myself offended, irritated or skeptical about any of the things "God" has said on the program. It's all the more amazing, considering that they haven't pulled any punches as far as what Joan has come up against. She has tried desperately to get Him to be precise, berated Him for inconsistencies, cried to Him about children dying and yelled at Him when she was having a crisis of faith.

It's easy to conceive of a show about cute kids having a good time with a cool God. It's a lot harder to get anything nearer the truth. I give the show top marks for not taking the easy way.

Best of blogs - day-after version

2004-10-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

Since I seem to be having trouble getting any work done today, the least I can do is save others some complicated mouse-clicks and lift some good quotes about the debates.

In this online article of New Republic, Martin Perez talks about his problem with Kerry's presentation of the facts:

It's not just that he has exaggerated what has gone wrong in Iraq. His entire speech was premised on the assumption that there were European troops and Muslim troops and United Nations gendarmes who would have gone to war with us against Saddam had Bush only waited another few days, weeks, months in the spring of 2003. That is a lie.

Well, y'know, I was kind of wondering about that. Perusing the blogs of generally centrist people these days has made me think that many people have totally forgotten this or never got it in the first place.

James Lileks, who is one of the funniest writers in all of Blogland, wondered about all of these supposed allies that we should have been waiting around for, and finishes with a reminder of one of the great problems with this 20/20 hindsight:

Perhaps the “ally” is that big blue wobbly mass known as the UN, that paragon of moral clarity, that conscience of the globe. You want to really anger a UN official? Tow his car. Short of that you can get away with anything. (Sudan is on the human rights commission, to cite a prominent and amusing detail. It’s like putting Tony Soprano on the New Jersey Waste Management Regulation Board.) I don’t worry that the UN is angry with us. I’d be worried if they weren’t.

And finally, do I get some points for knowing that Kerry's Global Test would be pull-quote of the day? This from an e-mailer to Instapundit:

About that global test...
1) Is there an old copy of it floating around we can get our hands on?
2) Is it multiple choice or essay form?
3) Is the test written in French, German or English?
4) Who determines if we can retake the test?
5) Is it pass/fail or is it more like the SAT?

Well phooey

2004-09-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

All right, I'll be totally honest, though it kills me. Bush just plain didn't do as well in this first debate as Kerry did. I'm not sure why Bush seemed so flustered. He looked like he was getting steamed up over some of what Kerry was saying, and I thought he missed all kinds of opportunities to state his case better and really point out problems with Kerry's points. Looking at other blogs and listening to TV spin, it seems like that's about the consensus. I'll also be honest and admit that I didn't have the nerve to go find liberal sites and blogs and see if they were doing the happy dance. Probably they are.

Two thoughts:
* To be honest, if Kerry had been this guy a couple months ago, I wouldn't have that much trouble about the thought of him winning. But where has this cool-headed, informed and somewhat consistent Kerry been hiding out? He represented his positions so well in this debate that the conservative bloggers and talking heads are stuck with repeating old sound bytes ("voted for the war, before I voted against it") and making the arguments that Bush should have made better. Viewers that were paying very close attention might have noticed that Kerry reversed himself just in the course of the debate regarding whether Saddam was or wasn't a threat ... but people probably weren't paying that close attention.

* My guess of the sound bytes that get lifted: (1) Liberals will just love that Bush pronounced the word 'mullas' like 'moolahs' not once but twice, and almost said 'messed mixages' once -- oy vey. (2) Conservatives will be talking about Kerry saying that America ought to pass 'the global test' in considering our national defense. Who knows what Kerry meant exactly by that, but it's just the type of 'we just want to be popular' type of thing that people hate to hear from a Democrat, especially one that has seemed soft on terror.

Long-sleeve Day

2004-09-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well, mark your calendars. It's here. The first morning that I picked a long-sleeve shirt to wear. That must mean that the season of autumn will actually happen this year. (Me and Puxatawney Phil hang together sometimes and predict stuff just for the fun of it.)

Sure enough, when I take Clementine out to attend to morning business, it feels different. It's not just that delightful crispness in the air, it's the lack of noise. Beginning almost exactly on Mother's Day here where the corn grows, creation puts out the "Open for Business" sign and immediately starts advertising loudly. Crickets, jays, frogs, robins, squirrels, martins, owls, cats, and things that I have never been able to identify set up a racket to let you know it's TIME. "Here I am. Let's go! Got to have a family NOW!" I think the shorter growing season in the Midwest makes nature seem almost panicky in the months without an 'r' in them.

So in late August and early September, everything begins to look a little peaked. The corn, which this year shot up well past the 'knee-high by the fourth of July' rule (owing to growing conditions which even the taciturn farmers had to admit were ideal), has gotten worn-out looking and now it has gone to the crackly brown that only the farmers love. Birds give it a rest, and the evening choruses are made up of the deafening mechanical sound of the cicadas.

But now even the cicadas are dying out. (Clementine found a nearly spent one in the yard a week ago and showed off her hunting prowess by boring it to death.) The fever-pitch has melted into the need for a nap and awakened from that into watchfulness. The pair of red fox squirrels in the big maple tree don't chitter at Clementine anymore -- whatever family they managed is off on their own and doesn't need protection. The smaller one still chases the bigger one around the trunk once or twice, but it's just the nostalgic gamboling of an old married couple, nothing like her scandalous tartiness when the leaves were first emerging.

The next stop for straining ears is when you start hearing the steady cadence of migrating geese. But that'll be another post. For now the weather is gorgeous, the dog is sleepy, and my long-sleeve shirt will do the job until it's time for sweaters.

Dr. Bouteneff response

2004-09-28T19:04:00.000-07:00

Here's Dr. Bouteneff's response on OrthodoxyToday.net

Actually, that really does clarify a couple points, most of all why he veered so far away from endorsing one candidate or another.

I think the only part of it that still rankles is the inclusion of gun-control as if the Orthodox were of one mind concerning it, and that somewhat fetid throwaway about the tax cut ("the beneficiaries of Bush’s economic and tax policies are shamefully obvious"). That one might be worth a separate post, if I don't just decide I'm tired of all this.

Have you noticed the burn-out spreading through the Orthodox blogs concerning politics? Yep, I feel it too. We have deeper bonds that keep us together than what color state we're in, but it seems that things we'd like to believe are commonly-held values amongst us all just aren't, forcing you to wonder whether you've lost perspective. I would still think it was worth if if there's anyone out there who just hadn't really thought it through, but it seems all we have left are hard-heads like me. So as far as the Ortho-blog Planet, we could hold the election today, right?

Driving home with me just now

2004-09-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

Did you see it? We turned onto the hilly farm-road that takes us home and as we crested the first swell in the road, there was the full moon sitting exactly on the horizon like a plate balanced on its rim, organdy-yellow with imperfections dabbled into it and big. Too big really. Scientific-minded people have told me more than once why it looks so much bigger when it's right at the horizon, but I always forget.

As we sweep down the hill, the moon touches down with us; when we come back and over, it glides up and over. And we go on like this through several cornfields, the enormous glowing moon bouncing off the black treelines. Sometimes it peeks through branches. It swings out from behind the silo. Aren't things beautiful sometimes?

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Cloning

2004-09-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Well, how long did it take to go from assurances from scientists that we would never clone human beings to this?

And here's the most chilling sentence:

Professor Wilmut has stressed that his team has no intention of producing cloned babies, and said the diseased embryos would be destroyed after experimentation.

What a relief, right?

(Political part coming up. Skip it if you're sick of all this.)

This post from Kevin asks why we should vote for Bush when abortion is still legal, and many of the commenters seem to feel the same.

Bush is only the man at the top of a system that relies on both houses, the judicial branch and the American people. How many people in this country do you think will have no problem at all with Professor Wilmut's statement just as expressed -- not going to produce and destroy babies, only embryos?

(Segue-way back into religion:)
We need to stop imitating the world's culture. Civil authorities are not saviors or magicians. It is the work of the Church to effect the sea-change of opinion necessary to really end the horror of abortion. We don't have the ear of Americans for a lot of reasons, but if this issue is that important to us, we have to keep trying anyway. Or if we're too tired and discouraged to try, we at least can keep from holding elected officials to unreal expectations we couldn't meet ourselves.

The long and the short of it

2004-09-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

If you have interest in a much better answer to the article by Dr. Bouteneff, consider this from George Strickland at the Orthodoxy Today blog.

If you don't want to do any more mental heavy lifting, here's the capper:

American democracy may not be the ideal, but is there an adequate replacement? Approximation to the ideal is the best we can hope for this side of the Kingdom of God.

The difference between left and right -- 7 questions

2004-09-27T13:39:00.000-07:00

In posting concerning Dr. Bouteneff's article on how the Orthodox should vote, I've entered a discussion already in progress. Besides the Touchstone blog comments that I listed in that original posts, I later found a debate going on on here, and Matt also posted this reply.

If you are an Orthodox believer who leans Democrat or a "reluctant Republican" (as Dr. Bouteneff and Ann said they were), bear with me. I know these political discussions seem to take us out of the hard-won peace that we share in the One True Church and deposit us into the loud squabble that we want nothing to do with. But as I said earlier, this seems worth more consideration.

Here are some questions that I raise:
1 - Which party does the most to promote and protect religion? Not just Christianity, but all religion?

2 - Think of the groups and organizations which have systematically (not accidentally) done most to undermine Christian beliefs in this country. Is it Planned Parenthood? ACLU? The Hollywood elite? Gay rights activists? Whoever it is, which party do you think they're affiliated with? (If you don't like my list, come up with your own. I'm pretty certain the answer will be the same.)

3 - If you don't feel that Christians are embattled at present, consider the advancing trends in cloning, euthanasia and stem cell research -- which candidate would you expect to take real action against these threats to life as God intended it?

4 - If you think that abortion and capital punishment cancel each other out, as Dr. Bouteneff suggests, which one is clearly opposed by the Orthodox Church? And which has taken the most lives and left the most impression on American culture in the past 20 years?

5 - If you also believe that the Democrats' wealth redistribution, repudiation of capitalism and embrace of social programs demonstrate the more Christian approach to the poor, consider who is more able to give fairly and charitably to the poor -- faith-based organizations and churches or the enormous bureaucracy of a national government? To quote Matt:

In an imitation of love, socialism replaces private charity. It permits the rich man to say, "I don't have to help the beggar, the state will take care of him." In fostering this attitude, socialism not only hurts the poor, but it hurts the rich. It makes the rich man think he is not personally responsible for the welfare of the poor. But the rich man's salvation depends on how he responds to the beggar. On the Last Day he will wish he had emptied his pockets for the homeless and hungry instead of thinking the state would take care of them.

6 - The Democrats adherance to environmental issues seems laudable, but since that is virtually never linked to a Christian view of man as God's steward of creation, is it too surprising that this sort of man-made version tends to lead to the extremism of animal-rights groups like PETA?

7 - Lastly, let's consider the most difficult question of all: the invasion of Iraq. If you think that we shouldn't be there, is it because we weren't attacked first? If so, remember 9/11. Though Osama bin Laden orchestrated that, Middle Eastern instability and anti-Americanism had been growing more and more vitriolic, and attacks more frequent and well-executed throughout Clinton's presidency, though we never returned fire. Is it likely that it was all the work of one person, and is it likely that it would have gone away on its own? President Bush has carried the battle off our homeland and into the Middle East and has been deemed foolish for doing so. But given what we saw on Sept. 11th, what were our options? More to the point, what are they now? We can wish desperately that war had never happened, but which will bring more lasting peace to America, Iraq and the world -- immediate withdrawal or a free and democratic Iraq? And if it's the latter, and if the democracy in Iraq seems to be struggling now, which candidate do you believe is better able to bring it and us through the next four years?

Those are the questions I think to ask. I really hope that they don't seem merely argumentative.

Caffeinated charity

2004-09-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

In response to this silly post, Fr. John McKuen referred me to an Orthodox Haitian mission which sells "Mission Bleu" coffee. Being one of the slowest human beings in the world, I only today have gone investigating. Here is more information about the coffee and the mission.

It seems like a very good way to give in time of need. (For extra gold stars, of course, you could skip the coffee order and just plain donate. If you do that, just know that I aspire to be as good as you.)

Music to my ears!

2004-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

(sing with me now)

The glory of the Lord has shown on you,
Exult now, exult, and be glad, O Zion
Be radiant, O pure Theotokos,
In the resurrection,
The resurrection of your Son.

You got it, didn't you? It's from "The Angel Cried", the wonderful hymn that greets us at the Paschal service and stays with us like a merry angel all through the Paschal season.

Sorry to have started it in the middle like that, but I was actually typing the words as I was listening to it and singing along. It is what happened to be playing on Incarnation Broadcast Network when I went off to check it out, after Huw referred to it.

Come on, people now! Orthodox music, 24/7? Byzantine, Znamenny, etc -- it's not just for breakfast anymore.

If Angels Could Vote?

2004-09-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

A very interesting thread is going on on the Touchstone blog-site concerning this article from Beliefnet.com and now on the OCA Web-site, entitled "How Should Orthodox Christians Vote?" Since the author, Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff, teaches dogmatic theology at St. Vladmir's Seminary, I have no doubt of his level of erudition, but like James from Touchstone, I find myself frustrated with the article. Dr. Bouteneff gives no definitive answer to his own question, and seems to want to conclude at the end that a good Orthodox Christian really can't answer it either (at the same time saying that Orthodox should vote). Worse, one gets the idea that the inability to choose stems not so much from their differences as from an idea that being detached from the world prohibits us from getting too involved.

With (I hope) the requisite amount of respect due for Dr. Bouteneff, I think that this tendency amongst us doesn't serve us well. If we have concluded, as he has, that we should vote, it seems ludicrous to ignore generations of liberal heterodoxy in order to appear pious and non-judgmental.

Here is a response from Dr. Jonathon Chaves of The George Washington University:

My take would be this: This essay is yet another example of the false "angelism" that afflicts so many of our contemporary intellectuals: "you can't pin me down, I'm above the polarities of the moment." But there is no "above;" at this point in history, the ideas that activate conservatives, certainly the traditionalist conservatives, are grounded ultimately in the great Christian heritage; contemporary liberalism is equally grounded in the Enlightenment and its essentially anti-Christian conception of human nature. A believing Christian today will have a very tough time accommodating to the current liberal doctrines, and will find that to do so will eventually necessitate relinquishing one Christian teaching after another.

And all I can say is that I wish I'd said that.

In the next four years, we will try to establish a democracy in Iraq, and we may have to face down Muslim terrorism once and for all or fail once and for all. We will probably see replacements in our Supreme Court, and we will undoubtedly have to face a flurry of attacks to our Christian beliefs in courts, schools and government. Can we really afford to strike a pose of vacillating sanctimony by refusing to vote? Or choose a party of abortion, moral relativism and socialism because they're "not so different" from the other?

About the UN

2004-09-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

When Christ sent the disciples out into the towns and villages, He exhorted them to be "wise as serpents, but gentle as doves" (Matt 10:16). That verse, like so many of the more quotable ones, has become many things to many people, but to me it suggests that we are encouraged, even exhorted, to be not just loving but discerning in our approach to the world.

That discernment needs to be fully engaged when we hear the United Nations (UN) being held out as a hope for peace and harmony in our times. On the face of it, the UN offers a promise that all nations will come together, all peoples will be accountable to a wise governing body that will uphold human rights, promote fair trade and punish tyrants -- who wouldn't want that?

But this is where the discernment comes in. It would be wonderful if the U.S. and all the world could place complete confidence in this body so that, in the words of the prayer, "we may live a calm and tranquil life in all peacefulness and dignity." But as this WSJ editorial bluntly puts it, the UN has no moral standing.

Two unpleasant points that have to be made about the UN:

* It has been depressingly ineffectual, mired in politics and red tape. The UN has looked on as populations were slaughtered in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and now Sudan. The UN issued the orders for Saddam Hussein to cease-and-desist; the U.S. has acted on those orders and now Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that our liberation of Iraq was "illegal".

* Worse, it has been found to be riddled with corruption, as shown in the underreported Oil-for-Food scandal that generated over $10 billion for Hussein's regime. This action was undertaken in the name of humanitarian aid for the people of Iraq -- in reality it was (in the words of the New York Times) ""an open bazaar of payoffs, favoritism and kickbacks."

Like so many others, I cherish the ideals under which the United Nations was founded. I pray for the day when violent men who love conquest and power will be brought into subjection to the mandates of a rightful authority. But for now I also urge fellow Christians not to mistake the good intentions of the UN for the good actions that can promote human rights for God's children everywhere.

Recapping the knee-capping

2004-09-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it didn't take long to find connections between the CBS team and Kerry' folks. Note: no one is saying that Kerry's guys orchestrated this. For my part, I don't think that they did. But I think they might have been aware of what one of the little half-crazed foot soldiers had in mind. Most likely we'll never know -- although it's interesting to note that it's largely due to alternative avenues of information that this story broke at all.

I would like to feel sorry for Rather et al, but consider some of the outrageous hypocrisy and duplicity of this:

* When critics to the 60 Minutes story first emerged, Rather got mad that people weren't focusing on the accusations -- um, hello? Remember the Swift Boat Vets? It was apparently enough for everyone to talk from Day One not about the charges but about supposed GOP connections that were never found and a 'web of inconsistencies' that never materialized. No member of the press has ever asked Kerry to answer the charges; talking about the weakness in their case was the only coverage they got in most newspapers and network news.

* Rather tried to deflect accusations about the timing of the story by saying that CBS had been working on it for four years. So we're supposed to believe it was a pure coincidence that it was released shortly before the election and synchronized both with an incredibly mendacious tell-all book by Kitty Kelly and with the last big anti-Bush offensive by the DNC (called "Operation: Fortunate Son")?

* Sept 10 - Rather claims that the criticism of the report was mostly the work of "Partisan political operatives" -- Yep, worked for Hillary. Blast that vast right-wing conspiracy -- they've done it again. Well, this one always plays well to the base, I guess. For the record, the 'partisan political operatives' in this case included Killian's son and widow, lawyers at powerline.com, journalists at instapundit.com and those rednecks over at NBC, ABC, the LA Times and the Washington Post.

* Sept 15 - "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story." -- I think he meant this to just shut all the upstarts down once and for good, but the rejoinder was so obvious, everyone almost said it at the same time. "Dan, the story IS broken."

* Sept 15 - CBS interviews Killian's secretary who says that the documents don't seem authentic, but that they reflect what was going on at the time -- A secretary. Right. So without answering the very real concerns that the story was contaminated by fraud, CBS decides to be magnanimous enough to concede that mistakes were made but tells us the story is still right as rain. Hoo boy.

* Sept 20 - Dan Rather's humble pie-eating contest -

If I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question. But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Well, certainly without the fear induced by checking your facts out. And as for the favoritism thing -- don't get me started.

Are we martyrs?

2004-09-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

The saint featured in my "Daily Lives and Wisdom" book today was New Martyr Hilarion of Crete, who died in 1804.

Sometimes the hagiographies of the new martyrs are more of a shock to read than the ones of the early Church. They don't seem like stylized stories that belong to the same world as the features in a Byzantine icon. They seem unvarnished by whatever embellishments centuries of retelling might have lent to them. The actual martyrdom may not be as graphic, prolonged and elaborate, but you can simply believe that it happened just the way it was told -- 'mere' martyrdom, to use the C.S. Lewis term.

Here is the write-up from "Daily Lives":

Hilarion led an uneventful life until he was accused of embezzlement. Rather than pay his debt to society, he went to his friends. When they would not help him, he fled to the safety of an influential Moslem. Hilarion renounced Christianity for the Muslim faith and was given enough money to live comfortably. However, when his conscience reproached him, he moved to Saint Anne's Skete on Mount Athos. He hoped to atone for his sin before God. His sincere repentance touched all those around him. Still his guilt would not leave him. After many months, he decided to confront the Moslem man who helped him and to deny the Muslim fiath. Once there, he declared himself to be a Christian for all time, and in 1804 he was beheaded.

How little the Muslim world seems to have changed since then. How easy it is to imagine the same story playing out constantly these days in countries under Muslim rule, perhaps so frequently that the Church couldn't even keep up with the new martyrs and recognize them all.

But I don't mean to fasten my attention on the earthly enemy in the story and miss the bigger point. As always, when I read a martyrdom story, I think, "Could I have done what they did?" and then, when (not if) the answer is no, I think, "Where are our martyrs today?"

The world is full of pleasures, distractions and temptations. It always has been, but with every passing generation the volume (so to speak) gets turned up, and the answering clarion call of the True Church gets turned down. If I were to give us in the present day any credit for the kind of spirit that moved St. Hilarion, it would be that we haven't bowed our knee to the hedonism and heterodoxy of the present culture, even when the weight of it forces us down. I'm sure that the concessions we've made would appall earlier Christians -- I think nothing of playing cards or using words like 'karma' and 'zen'. We've learned to take them in stride, because the Christian who didn't pick their battles better than that would have to leave the world entirely, which St. Paul advised against.

But will there come a time for one of us, or all of us, when the battle is suddenly enjoined? In our generation, will we be asked to conform to something -- either from the secular worlds of science and commerce or from a foreign enemy like the Middle-Eastern terrorists -- that virtually denies Christ?

Like the stories from the new martyrs, it's not at all hard to imagine that that's just what would happen.

Self-disrespect

2004-09-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful to Jim for pointing the way to this site where one can find a word from the desert fathers. Does anything run more counter-current to the world than thoughts like this from Abba Sisoes:

Let yourself be despised, cast your own will behind your back, and you will be free from care and at peace.

You know, I've re-written the commentary on this three times, and I don't know why. There's nothing I can add to it -- it speaks for itself. "... cast your will behind your back." I'll see if I can't remember that one.

Requiem

2004-09-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

I had lots of plans of what I was going to do today, but they all more or less disappeared when I got a call from my goddaughter about the latest goings-on at my old church, which I've been calling St. Nicholas just to give it a name.

Just like old times. Another day of the soap opera. Another phone call where you wish you didn't have to say anything, but you realize that you'd have to disconnect your ability to reason and any power of judgment not to.

But finally it will come to an end. It definitely will for my goddaughter -- let's call her Angela. The chancellor finally came for the awaited visit, and though he offered a momentary glimpse of church life as it should be, that glint of daylight was obliterated more or less forever when the same hard-headed group of people who have brought St. Nicholas to its current state of affairs tried to bait Angela into a ridiculous fight before the chancellor had been gone for ten minutes.

The chancellor's visit was one last hope to turn back from sailing this ship onto the reefs forever. Apparently this group just couldn't stand the suspense any longer. They wrested the controls back at the first opportunity in order to behave as badly as they possibly could -- blaming, complaining, twisting facts, dwelling in unrealities, grasping at desperately sad and implausible lies. It's finally more pathetic than it is infuriating.

With this last fiasco, all but one of the remaining families will jump ship. So this Sunday, the group will finally be within sight of the unspoken goal -- a church of the few but like-minded. The word coming back through channels is that the one who has stood at the middle of it all is ... miserable. Not out of any sense of wrongdoing, but from bewilderment, anger, mourning ... anything but self-doubt, honesty or repentance.

I sit here in my living room in quiet at the end of the day. I report it disinterestedly, not caring so very much now what happened exactly. It's over. It's been over. I'm on the other side of the heartbreak that consumed the first part of the year. This week I start going to the new church I've found, feeling a little like damaged goods. Maybe I even feel a little afraid in case any of this ugliness clings to me and infects the new place where I seek sanctuary and fellowship.

I talk about it because it's what happened. And I talk about it partly because I tend to think these days that bizarre and depressing as it might seem, this is the history of the Church as well. Not always glamorous, triumphant or holy. Sometimes weak. Misguided. Broken. Human. It's only recently in my Bible readings that I've realized that the epistles are full of it, side by side with the inspiring and soul-replenishing verses that we love so much to hear.

When we read the stories of martyrs and apostles and councils, I think we envision a world of much easier choices, where the path of the One True Church was easy to see and the bad guys were obvious. But isn't it more wonderful really to think that these early saints had to make their way as we do, one painful step at a time? And doesn't it help more to think that what we do now matters much more than we may think?

The Christians of the first centuries might have had no idea how long the Church Age would last -- it seems like they expected Christ to return any minute. And from this they drew strength to do the right thing, to make their way in spite of martyrdom and schism. We know better now only because it's impossible not to. The age of this battle for humanity has lasted almost two full millennia now. God alone knows how much longer it goes on.

What hope do we have apart from God?